A bird-watcher starts thinking inside the box

ShareThis

Hank Toulson bought a couple of wooden French wine boxes at a yard sale because he thought they might come in handy someday. He set them aside until he could figure out what to do with them."Then a light bulb went on," he says. "I looked at them and thought they could be chateaux for the birds."He turned them into two-hole chateau-type birdhouses that he mounted on 7-foot poles in his Rocklin, Calif., back yard. He got the idea while looking out his back door at a similarly shaped birdhouse a friend built for him.A longtime bird-watcher, Toulson, 88, says the birdhouses have only added to his enjoyment of attracting birds to his back yard. Thanks to the birdhouses and feeders dotting the narrow yard, there's never a dull moment. Toulson can sit inside the house or on the back patio and watch the antics of the many varieties of birds he attracts with food and shelter.He even built a stairway in the hillside along his side fence with a couple of chairs at the top. He calls it the crow's nest, elevation 531 feet."A friend figured out the elevation, and we put a sign up there. I can sit up here evenings and watch the garden and the birds."Titmice and lark sparrows dash in for a bite to eat. Tree swallows swoop down into the holes during nesting season to feed or tend their babies. They raise two broods every year, he says. What fascinates Toulson most about them is that the pair arrives days before building the nest to scope out the accommodations."They go in and out, and will defend the birdhouse against other birds. Then in a few days, they start building a nest."Toulson researched birdhouses before he built them. A house's dimensions and the size of the hole are important, and he learned how high to make the hole from the base so the babies can climb out. He learned to put a piece of netting or make some scratches in the wood below the hole on the inside so the babies could pull themselves out.He also discovered that the metal perch he made for the top of the birdhouses got too hot in summer, so he substituted wooden perches.He even supplies the nesting material, putting cotton balls in a suet feeder that the birds can reach easily.Birds never seem to share the houses, even though there are two separate sides."Only one family at a time will be inside, but it's fun anyway."If you're interested in trying a project like this yourself, Toulson says, some wine retailers give the boxes away. "It can't hurt to ask."(Contact Pat Rubin at prubin(at)sacbee.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)