Monday's Millinery Musings - Nesting place

Written by my new guest blogger - Jennifer

See the sidebar for Jennifer's etsy store or click here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/jenniferwhitmer

On St. Valentine's Day I read Ruth's post about National Nest Box Week, a yearly event, sponsored by  the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). For a week beginning on Valentine's Day nest boxes are placed in gardens all over the UK.  I was galvanized to get a nest box in our garden! The birds in North America, as  well as in the UK, have lost many of their natural nesting sites and their populations have been dwindling. The birds could use our help.

I clicked onto Ruth's link for the BTO where there are simple instructions for building your own nest box.  I printed out the instructions and gave them to my Valentine who is very clever with a cop saw, hammer and nails. In no time at all, as you can see, he made 2 lovely nest boxes from scrap wood found out in the garden. We hung one box on the grape arbor and the second in the apple tree (not too close together - birds like their space) and are hoping the song sparrows will be tempted by these comfortable lodgings.

The BTO began National Nest Box Week in 1997 and over the years there are believed to now be 5 - 6 million boxes in gardens all across the UK. They have significantly increased their bird population one box at a time! This makes my heart glad.

On February 14, my Valentine presented me with two  abandoned bird's nests that he found while pruning: a song bird's pensile nest (not shown) in the lemon tree, and a jay's cup nest (shown) found buried in the front hedge. I meant to take a picture of them for you (they were side by side) since they were unusual Valentine's Day gifts but someone (a bird!) has made off with the pensile nest! Thief! To be fair, how could any bird resist a pile of ready nesting materials? Now I'm curious to see if the robins or jays will start robbing twigs from the cup nest. It's always exciting out here in nature.