Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Bluebirds Benefit from Cascading Good Fortune, Part 2

In Bluebirds Benefit from Cascading Good Fortune, Part 1, we made bird house predator guards. Here, we will illustrate, in a general way,  how easy it is to make the boxes and install the whole works.

 Good projects usually start with a thorough review of existing examples and plans:


A tidy shop and good work surface are a must (our shop is small and simple but allows us to do all that we need):



The ability to use basic power tools....


...and hand tools is something that everyone should gain (and it's not that difficult):



 Now for installation! After checking various websites on appropriate bluebird box spacing and other criteria we installed steel T-posts (called such because they look like the letter T when cut in cross section). We then held up a box to get the position of the predator guard (directly under the box) and....


 ...using the wires we'd already had in place, simply twisted them up like a bread bag twist-tie (using vice-grip pliers):



Last-minute design change: we had to install some spacer blocks to allow proper fit of the box to the T-posts:


 Final installation and inspection of the boxes was exciting!


We installed 4 boxes in this field and 2 on the other end of the property. Add to that the 2 we installed last year and we have a total of 8 bluebird boxes - that outta do it, as they say!  


4 comments:

  1. Jennifer and Steve, Nice! Thanks for the instruction and photos! This is great. We've got bluebirds here, too and are going to put some houses up this year as well. We have about 10 acres of fields around our property and a nice variety of birds here. Thank you again, that's helpful! ~Vonnie

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  2. So awesome that your allowed to touch the power tools, lol

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  3. May your boxes soon be full (of the intended species!).

    I didn't see this on your blogroll and thought you might be interested.
    http://prairieecologist.com/2012/04/12/testing-assumptions-the-milkweed-seed-fiasco/
    Chris is w/TNC and I went on one of his walks in Nebraska last year. This post (and comments) are about milkweed seeds.

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