Woodland - Spring 2013 - (Page 22)

news tools and resources © CHeSApeAKe ImAgeS/SHUTTeRSToCK.Com © HeRo ImAgeS/CoRbIS On the Wild Side Little House on the Woodlot by howard youth Western bluebirds (above left) are just one of many types of birds you can attract to your woodland by providing nesting spaces. Constructing a nest box (above, right) is an easy and fun family activity. 22 woodland • Spring 2013 A round 1990, Dick Blaine put out five nest boxes on his property on the edge of Cupertino, California. His house sits at the edge of suburban sprawl, looking out onto a rolling green blanket of large parks. Blaine wanted to share his property with western bluebirds and other cavity-nesting birds. But that first spring he waited and waited. “They didn’t come immediately,” he says. “You have to be patient. It takes a little while for them to discover you.” Today, Blaine enjoys watching sky-blue and orange-rust western bluebirds return to his property each spring to raise their young. Tree swallows, oak titmice and chestnutbacked chickadees also take to the boxes. As his nesting bird population has grown, so have his responsibilities. Blaine is now program director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program, and he monitors not only his home boxes but also dozens of others in neighbors’ yards and a nearby park. Blaine’s nest boxes give cavitynesting birds much-needed places to raise their young at a time when natural nest sites—such as rotting wooden fence posts and woodpecker-chiseled dead trees—are at a premium, and introduced house

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Woodland - Spring 2013

Woodland - Spring 2013
Contents
Overstory
On the Ground
Faith and Forestry
Take a Hike!
Tools and Resources
Forests and Families

Woodland - Spring 2013