The garden as a bird feeder

In general, our garden is our bird feeder- we planted native plants and created habitat to suit birds' primary food- insects.  And it has worked well, though it is not your traditional "birder's garden".  I feel like I have written this post before (and probably better), but it is a good reminder this time of the year.  For several years I have had mixed feelings for bird feeders, and I have stopped using bird feeders through summer, spring and fall.  I have stopped using seed feeders altogether, and occasionally and seasonally use different forms of suet feeders (see below), including native plant suet we prepare ourselves (click here).

Our goal is to make our garden our feeder by planting native plants and providing habitat and this sustains a variety of birds, insects and other wildlife. This has been our goal, and even in a small, city lot, you can have success.

Our giant ant hill in our front yard is a Northern flicker's favorite.   Through the winter, flickers dig this up for tasty grubs (and defenseless slow moving adults in the cold).

In winter, we add some feeders for birds, but not the typical ones people are used to seeing, though non-traditional feeders, yet they are more natural. for example, my favorite, carcasses.
These parts and pieces are left overs from butchering our game meat during hunting season.

Although the aesthetic might not be for everyone, carcasses (from winterkill, and predator kills) are the original suet feeder (click here for more information). 

Even a little scapula can be an enticing feeder for chickadees, nuthatches, flickers, and downy woodpeckers.

In addition to providing housing for native solitary nesting bees, mason bee boxes, aka "larvae feeders" provide food for nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and chickadees that pick the overwintering larvae out. Here a chickadee uses its wings for improved leverage to get one out

But perhaps more important in our garden are the natural and original nest boxes- snags.

Birds are a source of food too. With a lot of birds around, come things that eat them.
Here a sharp-shinned hawk eats a cedar waxwing in our garden.

All that it left was the beak

So this winter, consider your feeders, and perhaps shift to some natural or unconventional feeders.  Feeding birds is a lot more than seed feeders, and it is a lot more effective with non-traditional means.

Chickadee update: they fledged

The black-capped chickadees that had been nesting in our garden fledged this morning, and fortunately I was able to watch it all.  I took this lousy video of the last two leaving the box.  Even though the video quality is not too good, it is still adorable to watch them fly out of the box for the first time.

It is always amazing how quickly they grow- just a couple of weeks ago they were eggs.

Here is a video from inside the nest box on May 15 showing the first 4 hatchlings getting fed for the first time

There is a good chance they will have a second clutch, and if they do, you can watch all the action inside the nest box on our live streaming video.

Scenes from the garden: April 21

Just an update on what is flowering, and projects I am working on in the garden.   It was such a nice day in Missoula, that I imagine a lot of people were out working in their gardens, too.  This time of the year, things in the garden change so quickly, that I just wanted to capture what is happening now.

Our front yard prairie has the most color now.  In the photo above, the electric blue of bluebells (Mertensia oblongifolia ) are in their peak.

Cutleaf daisy (Erigeron compositus) just started to flower.

Shooting stars (Dodecatheon conjugens) are still hanging on, but by the end of this weekend they might fade.

 Arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) is just starting to show some color.

The first to flower in our little prairie, sagebrush buttercups (Ranunculus glaberrimus) are still hanging on, though most are in seed.

Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) is also just starting to show signs of red.

We store garden dishes and glasses (thrift store dishes and glassware we only use for garden dining and entertaining) in the greenhouse, and I just re-purposed some old rake heads to serve as wine glass racks.

 The greenhouse is pretty barren right now, but there is a whole fleet of Thai peppers and eggplants growing steadily.

This is a sad composting area.  For a few years, I have been meaning to rebuild our compost bin, and this weekend I finally did it.  I am going to completely reorganize this area tomorrow.  In looking at this photo, I realized we have a lawn mower, but no lawn.  I think I'll Craigslist that tomorrow, or better yet, donate it to Home ReSource.  By the way, Home ReSource is a great place to get a variety of gardening tools, materials and supplies- everything from lawn edging, to pots, irrigation supplies, shovels, to fencing.  Just saying.

Sad compost bin.  My wife, the compost maintenance supervisor, deserves better.  But, this two bin composter has lasted us 12 years and has been moved all over the yard.

Canadian white violets (Viola canadensis) provide a lush ground cover in shady areas of our whole garden is just beginning to flower.

The white clematis (Clematis ligusticifolia), that covers so many arbors and trellises in our yard is just starting to leaf out.

The black capped chickadees that are nesting in our garden gather antelope hair for their nest box from a skull in our backyard.  Antelope hair is hollow and a great insulator.  We have a nestbox camera that we stream online- you can view the inside of their box here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/black-capped-chickadee-nest-box.

Backyard Birding, Bird Nesting and Garden Update

Do you ever take your laptop out to the back porch and use it to call in a ruby crowned kinglet, just to piss him off?  I do.

Anyway, I thought I’d take a moment to provide an update of what’s going on the in the garden.  It is a really busy time now- lots of stuff happening in the backyard (and elsewhere in life).  Spring is really here and birds are coming and going, plants are growing and flowering, and things are changing all around.


Garden update
Every year is different in the garden and that is what often makes it so much fun and interesting.  This year is shaping up to be another good year for arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata)  in the garden (the last time I proclaimed this was in 2009, ironically on almost the same date – May 15).  By the way, 2010 sucked for balsamroot in our yard.  The exciting thing is so many of the volunteer balsamroots are still going strong, and in probably only 4 years our front yard will be awash in them (just as I predicted in 2009). 

2015, baby- lots of balsamroot.  Check back.

The other good news is that this year, volunteers from another one of our long-lived, slow to flower, plants, the silky lupine (Lupinus sericeus), is flowering!  This is the first time that has happened.  It takes about 5 years to flower and my wife started the originals from seeds in 2000.  So, a mere 11 years later we have flowers from the second generation.  This whole feat is probably worthy of a dedicated post (maybe I’ll try to convince her to write a guest spot).


Looking back on the pictures and the post about balsamroot in our garden from 2009, it shows how everything in the garden is on the same pace this year.  We had a slow spring, but now it seems like everything is suddenly caught up.

Speaking of getting caught up, I recently revisited my list of garden projects for 2011, and I am making some progress, and I’ve even added a few more projects.  The garden is never done, which is a good thing when you like to garden.

• I planted some mountain ash (Sorbus scopulina) in the decadent quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) stand.
• I rearranged some plants in the front prairie, including getting rid of a green rabbit brush (Ericameria viscidiflora) and added some wood’s rose (Rosa woodsii), wax currant (Ribes cereum) and shrubby cinquefoil (Dasiphora fruticosa- by the way, when was the genus changed?) close to the house.
• I made a "cut-off" trail in front of the onion bed. The area near the grill shed is kind of a congested area in the garden and by adding this new trail/ path, people will be able to flow better.
• While I was at it making new trails and installing urbanite, I moved our concrete path 3’ to the north to make the bed larger and for traffic to flow better.  I am really happy how this turned out, and with all these projects, when things settle down, I’ll devote some time to individual posts.

Flax management

My motto with blue flax (Linum lewisii) is “a little goes a long way”.  Sure, it is aggressive, but it is beautiful, and the blooms last for 6 weeks or more.  It is a great accent plant in the garden to provide almost electric blue flashes of color.  But too much flax looks really weedy.  So, I actively manage it in the garden.  My plan usually involves removing older individuals- they get woody, too big, and they produce a lot of seeds.  In the wild, flax you see are typically about 3 stems or so, and, to me flax this size these look like they are appropriate in the garden.  I usually wait until after a rain, and pull them out by their taproot. Plants I get all the roots out of I save for friends (or enemies- a gardeners joke!), and the other ones I compost (though they are very slow to breakdown) or put on the brush pile.

This bucket of flax is heading to Kathy at Blackfoot Native Plants Nursery, who is a friend, I assure you.  She asked for them. I swear.

Bird Nesting Update

• Nuthatches
• They laid their eggs around May 4, so the eggs should hatch around… May 18^th- today!  I need to spend sometime this evening loitering around the box.   
• Chickadee
• The chickadees have 8 eggs in their box, and hatching should be around May 24 (incubation is around 12 days).   You can always look into their box and see what’s happening on the nest box camera.
• Flicker
• The flickers have been around and have excavated the box.  They also excavated two holes in my neighbor’s silver maple.  They tried this last year, and I was so happy for them, but ultimately they got displaced by squirrels and nested in our backyard nest box.   I suspect they will nest here again.

Backyard Birding
The backyard birding has been really good this year. Species are coming and going on their way north, and to nest.  White crowned sparrows and Townsend’s solitaires in particular have spent a lot of time in the garden this year.  Also, Varied thrushes, Chipping sparrows, Bohemian waxwings, Song sparrows, Ruby crowned kinglets (including the angry little guy at the top of this post) and other species arrived at the same time as past years; hummingbirds seem a little farther behind.  There have been reports of hummingbirds from all over town over the last week or more, so they are here, and any day they’ll come to our garden.

Locally, the feeling is that things are behind schedule- owing to the cool spring, but the fact that species arrivals are in sync with past years speaks to the larger spatial scale at which they travel and interact with the landscape as a whole.  It is like the difference between weather and climate. Interestingly, yellow warblers arrived in our garden three weeks ahead of past years.

Looking back on the pictures and the blog post on balsamroot from 2009, I referenced earlier, it shows how everything in the garden is on the same pace as last year.  So the gist is, a lot is going on and it is just about the same as it always is.  Or something like that.

Nuthatch and chickadee nesting update

The red-breasted nuthatches completed their nest, and apparently have begun incubating eggs.  Today the female remained in the nest and the male visited regularly to feed her.  He also spent quite a bit of time smearing sap around the entrance to the nest (shown above). This behavior is characteristic of the red-breasted nuthatch, but several nuthatch species perform tasks that help keep their nest free of pests and parasites.  For example, white-breasted nuthatches with scrape the outside of their hole with bad smelling insects to dissuade intruders. 

The female will incubate the eggs for two weeks, so around May 18th the young should hatch.

This year we installed a camera on the outside of the nuthatch box, and we will stream it when things get interesting.  Next year, we'll probably move that camera inside their nest box.  

The chickadees are just about done with their nest construction and similar to the past, it is made mostly of squirrel fur, and some antelope hair.  The female has been roosting in the nest box for the last couple of nights, and I suspect she will begin laying eggs anytime now (if she has not already).  Unlike the nuthatches, we have a live streaming camera inside the nest box- click here to see what is going in inside 24/7.

This is what happens at the nest box while I'm at work...

So, I've always wondered what goes on when I am not watching.  That is one of the reasons we installed nest box cameras in the flicker and chickadee boxes.  In order to see if anyone is checking out the boxes for nesting, I devised what I call a NIB (Nesting Indicator Bar), some might call it a twig.  I install the NIB in the entry hole of the nest box, and if it gets removed, I know something has been exploring the nest box.  So, when I leave for work, the NIB is in place, and when I get home, it is gone.  Sure, I know something has been in there, but what happened?  To figure this out, I recently installed a motion activated camera in front of the nut hatch box.  For eight years or so red breasted nuthatches have been nesting in this box, so I assumed that every time the NIB is gone, it is because a nuthatch took it out.

In the end I was right, but if you watch the slide show, you'll see a lot more happens.  Watch closely and you'll see that it begins and ends with a nuthatch on the box and excavating, but in between it gets visited by a black capped chickadee, a northern flicker, a house sparrow, my neighbor's cat and a squirrel.  Let's just say, that squirrel, isn't going to bother the nuthatches.

By the way, the nuthatches have excavated the box, and are just about done filling it with nesting materials.

Black capped chickadee nest box excavation in full swing!

The Black capped chickadees have been really actively excavating the nest box in our backyard today.  Click on the above video for an example, and follow along as they complete the cavity excavation, build a nest and raise some chicks.  Stay tuned, and follow all the action on the nest box camera by clicking here.

Chickadee Nest Box Camera is Live!... sort of

Camera installed in the chickadee nest box- this photo is from 2010.

The black capped chickadees have done a lot of excavating- including removing enough saw dust to reveal the camera inside of their nest box.  So, now I will start streaming video from inside their nest box - at least most of the day.  It is probably not going to be too interesting for a while (I suspect for the next few days you will just see sawdust), but stop by the nest box and check out the activity as the chickadees complete their excavation and start building their nest.

Here is the link to the broadcast of their nest box.  And, just to warn you again, it will just look like sawdust for a while, it is still pretty early, but I can't help myself.

It was really incredible watching the nest box cameras last year, and if you visit the the website you can see recorded videos from last year.  You can also read more about the cameras I installed in some posts from last year by clicking here, here and here.

Below is a little example of the chickadees getting fed last year, and an example of what is in store from the camera this year.

I also have a nest box camera in the northern flicker box, and once the flickers excavte the box enough to uncover the camera, I'll stream that, too.  So, stay tuned- it should be an exciting spring.

Nesting, nestling and fledging update

There is a lot going on with nesting birds in our garden. We have northern flickers, black-capped chickadee, and red-breastered nuthatches in various stages of nesting and fledging in nest boxes in our small backyard. Here is a breif run down on the actvity....

Black- capped chickadees

The chickadees should fledge any time now- they are ready to go but have probably been delayed by this rain. By the way, thank goodness for the rain!

If you haven't done so already check out the inside of the nest box with our streaming nest camera. But you'd better hurry because they are about to fledge. Click here to go inside the nest box.

At the beginning of this posts is a short video my wife took of the outside of the box and one of the adults feeding the young. For those that only know the chickadees from the inside of the nest box, this view might be interesting.

One thing I am really excited about is that we will be able to capture the mysterious second clutch this year on camera. every year, the chickadees have a second clutch, even after a typically very fruitful first clutch. The second clutch is usually smaller, and takes less time to fledge. It has aways appeared that the young from the first clutch help in raising (or at least with the feeding), the second clutch. Hopefully, though we'll be able to learn a little more of what is going on. It is not really common that chickadees have two clutches, so I am excited to learn more.

Red-breasted nuthatches

These little fellas have been a bit overlooked this year, I am sad to say. Not that they care, but theirs is the only box in which we did not install a nest cam. As a result, we have been so focused on the chickadees and the flicker business, that these little guys have been almost ignored (not really, but relatively). Anyway, they should be fledging any day now, too, but without all the fanfare. One interesting thing to note with these nuthatches, is that there are nuthatches nesting in the nest box I installed at the 8th Street Pocket Park, which is just a block away. Every so often these two nuthatch factions defend their little territories, which is kind of neat.

Northern flickers

Wow, they have had an eventful spring. Here is a little story of their spring...

• They excavated out nest box
• They also excavated a cavity in a silver maple in front of my neighbors house
• They laid eggs in the cavity in the maple
• European starlings evicted them from their nest
• The starlings are nesting in the tree
• The flickers left the area
• Last weekend the flickers returned to the nest box, and as of yesterday (June 3)have laid at least 2 eggs (in the photo below- kind of poor qualiy but it is a video capture).

I hope they can raise a clutch- it is getting late for them.

Once the chickadees fledge we will switch to the flickercam for nest box viewing. Exciting.

Nesting and Nest Box Camera Update

This was an exciting weekend for the nest box cameras. All three of our nest boxes have birds- northern flickers, black-capped chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches. New this year, the flicker and chickadee boxes have nest cameras, including streaming the chickadee nest cam! The flicker cam will be streaming next. Here is the link to the streaming video of the chickadee box, though not much is going on during the day, but in the evenings and mornings a lot happens.

I installed the cameras and then packed the boxes with sawdust (click here for a description). This weekend, now that the boxes had been excavated, my wife and I focused the lenses and adjusted the camera angles, though based on the quality of the chickadee camera's video, we might need to do some more lens adjustments.

The photo above shows the chickadee nest box, camera, and the freshly excavated cavity filled with moss and squirrel fur. Based on the female's nest construction (see the video below), it looks like she will be laying eggs soon, then the real excitement begins.

Here is link a short video taken this evening of the female burrowing in to the nesting material to carefully create a pocket for the eggs.

Nesting and bloom update

Wow. Things have changed in the garden. I was out of town for week and when I got back I was amazed how quickly things change this time of the year. Suddenly I feel like there is so much to do in the garden, and suddenly I am so far behind. Here is a brief update of the goings on...

It appears that everything has leaves, buds or flowers on it now; below I list what is in bloom.

Nesting Update

• the chickadees are bringing nesting material into their box (click here for my favorite nesting material combo- squirrel and moss).
• The flickers evidently completed the excavation of their box all while we were gone.
• The mystery this year was what was happening in the nuthatch box? The nuthatches "claimed" this box early on, but then some chickadees began excavating it, and pretty regularly. And there was no sign of the pair of nuthatches. Were these the same chickadees that were also going to nest in the normal chickadee box? And who's ever heard of 2 pairs of chickadees nesting the same yard? Craziness- they need a couple of acres because of competition for food. But now, all has been revealed- the nuthatches have returned and they are now nearly completely done excavating their box.

Once they finish excavating they will probably continue their tiny onslaught of my bent willow furniture- shredding off the bark into fine nesting material for their little, freshly excavated cavity. Then they will carefully line to opening of the box with sap- lest I try to get back said components of my bent willow furniture. Order has been restored.
Bloom Update:

Flowering now- arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata ), golden current (Ribes aureum), blue bells (Mertensia oblongifolia ), larkspur (Delphinium bicolor ), Jacobs ladder (Polemonium pulcherrimum), biscuitroot (Lomatium triternatum and L. dissectum), violets (Viola canadensis ) pasque flower (Pulsatilla patens), cutleaf daisy (Erigeron compositus, pictured above), blue virginsbower (Clematis occidentalis, see photo at beginning of the post of the virginsbower on my clothesline), prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), blue eyed mary (Collinsia parviflora, see below- this is one of my favorites, and it makes a nice groundcover), sivery lupine (Lupinus argenteus ), kittentails (Synthyris missurica ), Oregon grape (Mahonia repens ), and many more species flowering every day that it is hard to keep up.

So much to do. Last weekend I removed a little remnant lawn patch that I have had my eye on to turn from lawn to what I call a mowable prairie. In the lawn's place I planted natives that can be mown and maintained- like a lawn was originally intended- a meadow that could be mown to a height that would allow for paths and play areas. Instead of a lawn or a water hungry meadow, I planted this with drought tolerant, trample resistant natives like yarrow (Achillea millefolium ), hairy golden aster (Heterotheca villosa), mixed aster and erigeron species. After planting starts and transplants in the mowable prairie area, I covered the whole thing with mulch, but not just any mulch, gentle reader, a special mulch... this mulch is made from seed heads and flower parts I cut off last fall and kept in a bag out side all winter (cold stratification). Then I carefully (read: not at all) applied it to the surface of the fresh bed. I've found that with hairy golden aster, and my bag of assorted asters (by assorted I mean I can't really tell the difference between most asters and erigerons in my garden), they do great germinating when laid down in a mulch. I have been waiting for rain to do this, and by golly the rain has finally come (hopefully it will continue for a little while).

I did have a chance to also plant my potatoes, beets, peas, and other things I am probably forgetting and I finally built a new raised bed- for onions (see below, with cat guard installed), I moved the hill that was in its place and potted up all the asters and such that were on the hill. Maybe this weekend, I'll plant those potted up plants into the front yard or fill in other places in the yard.

Now I am well on my way to completing my 2010 garden project list (click here for this list). According to the list, the only thing left is making a new composter, but in reality, the list has really grown...

Lots going on suddenly, more updates with pictures to follow, oh and, a new arrival to the garden yesterday, a golden crowned kinglet.

Spring cleaning for the nest boxes

Spring is nearly here, though the calendar does not say it, and the groundhog evidently begs to differ. Nevertheless, some of the first signs of spring are apparent; black-capped chickadees are singing their lovey-dovey "cheeseburger"song, the smell of road-killed skunk (ahhh, spring), and a mourning dove in our yard today. Soon robins will be back, and spring will be here in earnest. Or not- it is February in Montana after all, but I digress. Anyway, I'll return to thoughts of spring...


February is an important time to think about birdhouses. The following post contains some information about nest boxes I wrote in a post about the same time last year "Bird house basics". February is when birds begin courting and looking for nesting places. Having a bird nest and raise its chicks in your yard is very gratifying for wildlife gardeners.

Since I like to keep the nest boxes empty in the winter so many birds will use them as roosts in our yard as a way to escape the cold (see here). Now is the time to clean and refill the nest boxes and it is a fun annual rite of spring (that along with connecting my rain barrels to our downspoutsm,, but that will have to wait, a while). This year the added bonus are tiny cameras I am going to install and hopefully post pictures or streaming video to this blog. This also is the first item on my 2010 to do list I can cross off, and an exciting one.

Although it is fun to see birds nest in your yard, there are many things to consider before hanging a birdhouse. Know what species of bird you want to attract and have reasonable expectations (click here for more information). In our yard, red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, and northern flickers are the ones we are most likely to attract. Since they are cavity nesters (that is, they nest in hollow spaces in dead trees), they require box-like houses that simulate tree cavities. The reason I encourage people to cater toward cavity nesters is that these birds are having a tough time, from habitat loss, loss of snags (nesting sites), to competition from invasive birds (typically secondary cavity nesters). Although chickadees, nuthatches, and northern flickers will nest in an empty box, they prefer to excavate the cavity themselves, because this assures a clean home free of pests and predators.

Red-breasted nuthatches are the first to begin excavating their selected box- they begin excavating in early to mid February (between February 5 and 21 at my house) and they are usually complete by the first week of April (April 1-9) when they begin to fill their boxes with nesting material. Yesterday (Feb 15), I watched as a pair started excavating.

Black-capped chickadees start excavating about a month after nuthatches, with peak excavating around first week of April (from March 25- April 4), until middle April when they bring in nesting material (April 11-15). But they investigate and start defending nest sites in February.

Northern flickers are on a similar schedule as chickadees and they begin excavating in late March – early April (March 24-April 8), but they search for nesting locations in February and may do some exploratory excavating as early as the beginning of February.

As far as cleaning the boxes and refilling, below are some pictures from a chickadee box and flicker box. In the photo below, the lid on the nest box is opened to reveal the excavated cavity. Here you can see how they removed a lot of material, but still left many packed wood chips. This is why it is important to tightly compact the chips.

Here I removed the nest, and the portion of wood chips that covered the top of the nest, you can see they excavated about 1/2 of the box.Here is the nest removed form the box. Chickadees and nuthatches will add material for their nests. Whereas chickadees use animal hair, fur, and moss (this as I have mentioned is the best use for introduced squirrels), nuthatches will shred up bark into various layers of increasingly soft bedding, and they also smear sap on the outside of the hole to discourage insects and parasites from bothering the nestlings. It is really fun to watch them do this. You can help chickadees by providing fur ( for more information click here), animal hair or sphagnum moss in your yard for them. The nest is in two parts, a round egg area, and the base.Below are pictures of tree nests from past years, each are unique, based on the availability of nesting material, the age and experience of the builders, etc... They are all soft and adorable, though. You can even see a couple of eggs in one of the nests- this was from a the second clutch one year that evidently had poor germination (a little something for you gardeners).Here is the box cleaned out. This is a good time to inspect for any damage and do repairs. If there is any water penetrating into the box, fix the cause and let the box dry out before repacking. Although I build nest boxes from western red cedar, a naturally decay- and insect-resistant wood, which needs no protection from the weather, I fill my boxes with Douglas fir (typically chips from my thickness planer or jointer- see below), but you can use any species except cedar, teak, or mahogany. These species contain oils that prevent rot and insect damage but the dust can irritate nestlings. It is important to compact the chips, and I just use a piece of wood to pound it into submission. By compacting the sawdust, the birds can excavate a cavity without the rest of the filling collapsing on them.Normally that is it, but this year, I got a birthday present from my wife...mini cameras! These are the Hawkeye nature cameras (this is not a paid product endorsement, unfortunately). I removed camera shield, to take up less space, I hope this is not a fatal flaw. In adding these cameras, I did not pack the wood chips to fill the box completely as you'll see. The first step is to mount the little bracket, and my only tip here is to mount it, so it is loose enough to be able to swivel the bracket to screw the camera to the bracket. Here is the camera installed in the chickadee nest box, notice the grove cut into the side for the wire to pass.
Below is my northern flicker nest bow, and one thing to notice is that flickers just about completely remove all the wood chips for the box and they do not require any nesting material. although they may use an empty box, one benefit to having he house filled, is that is discourages use by non-target birds like house sparrows and starlings, which will not excavate. However, once the flickers excavate their nest box, often European starlings will follow. It is crucial to remove the starlings, their nests (they bring in nesting material), or otherwise dissuade them from taking the flicker’s nest box. Click here for more information about flickers and starlings.

Below, the camera installed in the flicker box. Plenty of roomHere is the completed, freshly refilled nest box with a camera, waiting to be excavated. If you look closely, you will see one of my own inventions on entrance hole- a Nesting Indicator Bar, also known as a "twig". I place these "twigs" in the entrance hole of all my nest boxes to monitor if birds are investigating the boxes. Kind of low-tech compared to the mini cameras.

Spring is near.