Hello, welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Important Bird Areas Program and we’re here this afternoon at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshville, Massachusetts. Next we’re going to talk about backyard birding, a place where everybody has an opportunity to get involved and where many peoples interest in birding first begins. Birds are a lot like people in some ways. They have their own preferences in terms of where they like to live, the types of houses they like to live in. Some people like to live by themselves, other people like to live in busy apartment complexes. Most bird species tend to prefer to nest by themselves and for those species that nest in cavities, that would be things like bird boxes, like this tree swallow box beside me here. Typically in the same way that people have preferences of whether they like big houses, small houses, large windows, small windows, there are certain characteristics that are appropriate for various species of birds. So if you’re planning to put out bird boxes in an effort to attract birds to your backyard, it’s important to think about the diameter of the opening that the bird is going to have to go in and out of. It’s appropriate to think about the depth of the cavity from the bottom of the opening to the floor of the cavity, the side by side dimension and then in addition the actual placement of the box is very important. In the case of something like a tree swallow or an eastern bluebird that you would use a box like this out in the open in a field or at the edge of the woods is preferable, relatively low, chest high or so is not bad for these species. But for other cavity nesting birds, they may very well like to nest higher in the tree so that the box needs to be higher up on the trunk of a tree, sometimes actually set into the woods. In attracting species like eastern screech owls for example, they require a fairly large hole in a box that’s usually set back and not right out in the open. There are some species like wood ducks and hooded mergansers that will actually nest in bird boxes, but their nest boxes are often placed in the water on a post, so that they are completely surrounded by a moat and therefore a less accessible to predators. Predation is obviously an issue for all birds and in placing nest boxes in situations where there’s potential for predation, it’s always appropriate when possible to put a baffle or something on the pole beneath the box that will make it more difficult for climbing mammals to access the nest chambers.
