Some happy news...
Last summer, runsamuck and Gareth built a birdhouse as a kind of father-son woodworking project.
We stuck it up on the Moreton Bay Fig tree in front of our house, just on a whim. I thought it would be purely decorative - it's a rather odd size, and the hole is bigger than ideal. It's also located only about 10' above the sidewalk, with people walking their dogs under it every day.
Gareth stuck some of the space shuttle mission stickers we got at JPL last year on the bottom. Somewhere in the process the perch outside the entrance hole got broken off, but that's probably a good thing.
A few weeks ago, runsamuck mentioned he thought he saw birds fluttering around it. About a week later, I happened to be looking out the kitchen window while doing dishes, and also saw a flutter...and it was distinctly blue! Not trusting my view through the (rather dirty - I really need to do some window washing) window, I grabbed the little camera and went to sit quietly on the porch for awhile. Sure enough, the box has been occupied by a pair of Western bluebirds!
(Unfortunately these were taken in the afternoon, so they were a bit backlit; brightening them made them really grainy.)
I've seen them around my office building, but that's surrounded by a large open grassy area, and has a couple of golf courses nearby. I've never even seen them in my neighborhood before, and at one time, I think they were considered pretty rare around here. There has been a local effort to provide more nest boxes, but I don't know if any were close to my neighborhood. VT's husband is an instructor at one of the local community colleges and censuses bluebird boxes as a side project. I told her about it and she said they've had boxes around their house for several years with no occupants.
They're a very stealthy pair. They fly in and out almost silently; they make a very soft "chu chu" sounding call. They land on the upper branches of the tree first and check everything out very carefully before flying down to the box. Scooter has noticed them though and starts chattering at them from the sidewalk. We're gonna have to keep him inside when they start fledging. Although there's a bunch of other neighborhood cats... Aggh!
We stuck it up on the Moreton Bay Fig tree in front of our house, just on a whim. I thought it would be purely decorative - it's a rather odd size, and the hole is bigger than ideal. It's also located only about 10' above the sidewalk, with people walking their dogs under it every day.
Gareth stuck some of the space shuttle mission stickers we got at JPL last year on the bottom. Somewhere in the process the perch outside the entrance hole got broken off, but that's probably a good thing.
A few weeks ago, runsamuck mentioned he thought he saw birds fluttering around it. About a week later, I happened to be looking out the kitchen window while doing dishes, and also saw a flutter...and it was distinctly blue! Not trusting my view through the (rather dirty - I really need to do some window washing) window, I grabbed the little camera and went to sit quietly on the porch for awhile. Sure enough, the box has been occupied by a pair of Western bluebirds!
(Unfortunately these were taken in the afternoon, so they were a bit backlit; brightening them made them really grainy.)
I've seen them around my office building, but that's surrounded by a large open grassy area, and has a couple of golf courses nearby. I've never even seen them in my neighborhood before, and at one time, I think they were considered pretty rare around here. There has been a local effort to provide more nest boxes, but I don't know if any were close to my neighborhood. VT's husband is an instructor at one of the local community colleges and censuses bluebird boxes as a side project. I told her about it and she said they've had boxes around their house for several years with no occupants.
They're a very stealthy pair. They fly in and out almost silently; they make a very soft "chu chu" sounding call. They land on the upper branches of the tree first and check everything out very carefully before flying down to the box. Scooter has noticed them though and starts chattering at them from the sidewalk. We're gonna have to keep him inside when they start fledging. Although there's a bunch of other neighborhood cats... Aggh!