House Repair, Err, Actually Bird House Repair

A year and a half ago I put up a number of birdhouses around the property.  I've actually written quite a few blog posts about them.  I was really proud of the work I completed.  Not only did I customize them with "Squirrel Guards," I also made sure there were drainage holes for water.

And to absolutely make sure they would last, I painted them with enamel paint.  Next, I used enamel spray paint so the birdhouses would match the colors of an oak tree.  Honestly, I went all out for those houses.

So it made me pretty angry when I found the roof tore off of one.  Well I decided to do something about it.  I was going to make a new roof, but when I went to take the birdhouse down, I found the roof sitting inside the house.

Then, a Cuban Tree Frog jumped up out of the house, hitting me in face, causing me to fall off my ladder.  I really hurt my left toe falling.  But after I felt a little better, I took the birdhouse to my workshop.  I made sure to take lots of photos of the repair.  I'll explain my work as I show the photos.

So here's the birdhouse and roof on my bench.

It's not in that bad a shape.  The wood was a little warped, but other than that it's alright.  Let's take a peek inside to see if there's anything wrong with it.

No, it's just a little dirt.  I decided to use some "helping hands" in the form of clamps.  They held the top on while I nailed the roof down.

I found these awesome tiny white finish nails in one of Dad's parts buckets.  They were perfect for this job.

And here she is, as good as new.

Now it was time to put the birdhouse back on the pole.

Now that I've fixed the birdhouse I'm hoping to have a pair of birds nest in it this spring.  If not, I'm sure the Cuban Tree Frogs will hang out in there.  They will bide their time until I walk by, jumping with all their might, smacking me right on the forehead.  

Something's Been Wrecking My Birdhouse

Back in March I wrote a blog post about building and putting up new birdhouses.  We have so many birds around here it made sense to have plenty of birdhouses for them.  Here's the post:

The Birdhouse Community Apartments 

Like any woodworker/artist/bird enthusiast I take pride in my work.  This what the birdhouse looked like after I hung it up back in March.

I was taking a stroll past the birdhouse the other day, and became infuriated.  I looked at my birdhouse, and thought, "What am I looking at?"

So I took a closer look.

Closer....

Okay, now I'm mad.  I'm more than mad.  What you are looking at is the birdhouse's squirrel guard.  Something had destroyed the guard to enlarge the hole.  The reason I put the guard there was because squirrels like to climb into the birdhouses and eat the eggs or young chicks.

Right now, here are the suspects.

First up, a squirrel or squirrels.

I suspect this monstrosity was chipping away at the birdhouse to get to baby chicks.  They are a malevolent bunch.

Suspect #2:  Idiot woodpecker.

Okay, it's technically this is called a pileated woodpecker.  But they like going around putting holes in things.  Although it's really working against it's fellow birds' self interests by enlarging the squirrel guards.  We have dozens of trees around the property.  Why did this redheaded asshole decide to destroy my birdhouse?

So that's my story so far.  If the hole gets worse I may end up replacing the squirrel guard.  If it gets even worse than that, I will just replace the whole birdhouse.  The backyard should be on alert.  I'm keeping an eye on all the birdhouses.  Nature should know I'm not above employing underhanded techniques to protect my birdhouses.

Springtime Is In Full Effect: Carolina Wren Edition: Egg Me!: Part 2

Here's the link to Part 1:

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/04/springtime-is-in-full-effect-carolina.html

As I posted in the previous blog post, springtime is in full effect.  A pair of Carolina Wrens' spent a few weeks building a nest on the porch.  Then, surprise!  They laid eggs.  It has been ten days since my first post and a few things have happened.

First up, the female Wren laid two more eggs.

She ended up laying one egg per day for four days.  Now comes the hard part for her, sitting on the nest.  This presents a problem.  When I walk out on the porch she doesn't want to move off the nest, but if she sees me looking at her, she takes off flying.

She's about taken my head off a few times.  So I have to "Use the force," and walk quickly by the nest without looking at her.  If I take my time, or look her in the eyes, she comes flying straight up my nose.  I'm not kidding.  One time she came pretty close to picking my nose as she flew by.

I can't blame her that time.  It was early morning and the sun hadn't come up.  I was standing by the nest, and looked in her direction.  Since it was dark, I couldn't see her, but she saw me.  That's when she panicked, and zoomed by me.  I'll admit, I did not take it well.  I hadn't been scared like that in a long time.  But again, that one was on me.

The incubation period for Carolina Wrens' is 14-17 days.  I'm not sure if that's from the day the first egg was laid or not.  Since it's so warm down here in Florida I'm going to guess the incubation period is going to be closer to 14 days.  So in about 3-4 days I'm going to start looking for baby chicks.  But I'm going to do it extremely carefully.  I might also use a shield.  We'll see.

Springtime Is In Full Effect: Carolina Wren Edition: Egg Me!

A funny thing has happened the last few weeks.  A pair of Carolina Wren's have been building a bird nest on the screened in porch.  I know this leads to a few questions.  First, "How did they get in?"  Well, one of the screen doors is bent at the bottom.  They learned they can just fly down to the ground, and hop onto the porch.  The crack in the door is plenty big enough for them to scoot through.

The second question would be, "Where are they building this nest?"  Well, that's the funny part of this story.  They are building their bird nest in my old bird feeder.  It was old and broken so I had it sitting in a chair on the porch.  I guess they thought it would provide a nice place for a nest.  So for two weeks they built it.

For two weeks, when I was sitting in my chair, I would happen to catch a glance at the Wrens on the porch.  I thought they were hunting for bugs and lizards.  Namely, because they would be on the porch for a short time, and then head out.  What I didn't know was they were building a nest.

What really makes me question the bird-brained madness of it all is, if you remember, I put up five bird houses around the property.  I wrote a blog about it back in early March.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-birdhouse-community-apartments.html

I was told that Carolina Wrens build several nests around the area, and then decide to choose the best one.  So I figured that this would end up being a decoy nest.  I ended up taking some photos of the nest.

The next day I decided to take a closer view.  That's when I saw this:

That, my friends, is a Carolina Wren egg.  I guess they chose their nest.  So today I went out to check on the nest, and I found this:

That is definitely two eggs.  Now we're starting to get a clutch of eggs going.  I'm going to keep checking on the nest a few times a day.  I want to take photos of any eggs as soon as they appear.  So stay tuned.  It won't be long before they hatch.

Springtime For Bluebirds... And Happiness! Part 2

Here's the first part of the story:

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/03/springtime-for-bluebirds-and-happiness.html

In my previous blog I was telling the story about how a pair of mated bluebirds had built a bird nest in my birdhouse.  Well, they ended up laying six eggs.

It's funny.  Even their eggs are blue.  But I digress.  Not too long afterwards the eggs began to hatch.

Like I said, there were six eggs, but only five of the eggs hatched.  The last photo was taken on March 31st, 2019.  A few days later I started taking daily photos of birds.

April 4th.

April 5th.  One of them has opened his eyes.

April 6th.  A lot more of their feathers came in, in just 24 hours.

April 7th.

April 8th.  They are really starting to be fully covered.

April 9th.  Out of nowhere they now have blue feathers.

April 10th.  Everyone's eyes are open and feathers are coming in nicely.

April 11th.

April 12th.  They are starting to look like adults.  Or at least, juveniles.  And this guy has decided to move off the main nest into the corner.  I figure it won't be long before they leave the nest.

April 13th.  Everyone is awake and looking good.

April 14th.  Oh my!  They have left the nest!  Except for Bob.  Bob doesn't want to move out.  I don't blame him.

April 15th.  And they have all left the nest.  (Tears.)

Wow.  That's the circle of life.  Actually it's the circle of life in just 16 days.  Can you believe they left the nest in just 16 days?  But like a circle, life never ends.  Bluebirds can have up to three clutches of eggs in the spring.  So they might be back to lay more eggs.  Not to mention I have four other birdhouses set up around the property.  They might move into one of those.  And if they do, I'll be there.  Oh, and so will my blog.

And speaking of blog posts, this is my 700th blog post.  I started writing back in April of 2008.  Here it is 11 years later and I am still writing.  If there's something happening and worth writing about, I'll be here typing it all out.

A Sunflower Grows in Lutz

Recently I have posted quite a number of blog posts about my birdhouses.  Having birdhouses and bird feeders brings quite a large number of birds around the house.  Yesterday I discovered one of the weird side effects of having birds hanging around.

The bird feeder has the usual kinds of wild bird seed in it.  But the ones the birds and squirrels love the most is the sunflower seed.  In a "Damn nature!  You scary!" kind of way something pretty funny happened.  It seems one of the birds dropped a sunflower seed in the rain gutter.  Well, if a tree can grow in Brooklyn, then a sunflower can grow in my rain gutter.

And even though I am posting this on April 1st, I assure you this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

Here's a wide shot of the sunflower.

I actually noticed it when I was looking at the roof.  The reason I was looking at the roof is because all the pollen has piled up there.  I knew I was eventually going to have to go up there with the blower, and clear everything off the roof and clean the gutters.

I do need to clean the gutters, but I'm really having a hard time determining how clean I want it.  I don't want to get rid of the sunflower, but I really need that gutter clear.  We do get a lot of rain here in Florida, and it pays to keep the gutters clear.  I've got time to decide what to do.  After all, it's raining out there now.

The Birdhouse Community Apartments

If you're a regular reader you know that I've had a birdhouse out in the backyard for a while.  I've actually had pretty good success with it.  Or, should I say, the birds have.  It was brought up that there could be more than one birdhouse around the property.  I thought, "That's awesome!  Let me get on that!"

So, it was time to put up more birdhouses.  Four new birdhouses were delivered to house.  Two of the houses were bluebird houses, one was a parakeet house from the pet store, and one was a finch house.  It was decided that I would paint the two bluebird houses and the parakeet house.

First up, I drilled holes in the bottoms of the birdhouses.  If any rain would happen to get in, the holes would let it easily drain.  I also drilled holes to allow airflow and for wire to go through.  I wanted to use wire instead of drilling holes in the trees.

My photos start right after I had applied the first layer of paint.  I used an oil enamel paint that would withstand all the weird weather we get here in Florida.

There was a really interesting article on the internet about making barriers for birdhouses.  The barriers help keep out squirrels.  I thought, "I can make one using plywood and a forester drill bit."

First up, I cut the plywood into their appropriate shapes.  Then, I painted them with the oil enamel paint.

Next up, I finished painting the base coat for the three birdhouses.

After that, I drilled the wooden barriers over the entrance holes of the birdhouses.

Now the fun part, it was time to break out the forester bit, and drill the entrance hole.

Of course, I had to touch up the paint.  So I had to open up the can of paint again, and get to painting.  Once I was finally finished with the oil enamel paint, it was time to get to the fun part.  That's when I camouflage the birdhouses to blend into oak trees.  I use three spray paint cans to achieve the camo look.

When I first tried this technique I thought I needed a lot of green.  I was wrong.  I'm trying to blend into the oak tree bark which is more gray.  So I lightly spray black paint followed by a bit of brown.  The real trick is to use a light almond type of paint.  Blending the three colors makes the birdhouses look like a distressed gray color.  How well does it blend in?  Take a look.

Not bad, huh?  So now it was time to hang the first bluebird house.  There is a place on the property that birds like to hunt for bugs.  So I put the house in the oak tree right over top of the bug hunting territory.

Alright! Mission accomplished!  Now we move to the finch house.  I ended up hanging it near the bluebird house.

I didn't want to put the parakeet house near the other houses.  So I ended up putting it on the opposite corner from my original parakeet house.  I made a trip to Ace Hardware to pick up some supplies.  I ended up buying a 10 foot metal pole.  I also bought a bolt, nut and washer to attach the house to the pole.

I dug a three foot deep hole, and then managed to shove the pole into the ground another foot.  So, all in all, the pole was four feet deep.  I felt pretty good knowing it wasn't going to go anywhere.

Finally, there was just the one bluebird house left.  It was decided that it would be hidden in an Anise bush.  Can you spot it?

Let's look a little closer.

Closer.

I told you that I could paint a great camo pattern.  

So now there are five total birdhouses on the property.  I know what you're asking, "Have any birds moved in yet?"  Well, stay tuned!  There will be another blog post detailing the happenings around the yard.