Bluebirds are disappearing, and the Ironton Garden Club is doing something about it.

Saturday, August 26, 2000

Bluebirds are disappearing, and the Ironton Garden Club is doing something about it.

To get the public involved in the plight of the bluebird, the club will be selling bluebird houses at the Festival of the Hills, Sept. 9-10.

"We’re not charging a lot of money for the houses," club member June Klein said. "Just enough to cover our expenses. We just want to save the birds."

The garden club’s interest in building and selling the bluebird houses started at a recent meeting. Member Garnet Addis brought information on bluebirds and bluebird houses.

The club subsequently decided to adopt bluebird house construction as a conservation project.

"The people building the houses are very good at craft work," Mrs. Klein said. "They really know how to put them together. They are going to look wonderful when we’re done."

The houses will come with instructions on how to set them up and maintain them for bluebirds.

Club member Lorna Hannon said that part of the reason that bluebirds are becoming scarce is a lack of interest by the public in keeping and maintaining bluebird houses, the reduction of suitable trees and shrubbery for nests and an increase in cats, which hunt and kill the birds.

"Bluebirds are more adapted to the bluebird houses," Mrs. Hannon said. "They would rather live in one than in a hole in a tree."

Another reason for the decline of the bluebird population is, according to Wild Birds Unlimited of Toledo, competition from other birds, such as house sparrows, for the same nesting spaces. Usually seen in the rafters of barns and under the eaves of houses, the house sparrow will aggressively take over a bluebird’s nesting site and destroy its eggs.

The houses, which are made of scrap pine and cedar, are box structures with a hole for an entrance in the front. The floor can be removed to clean out old nests each year. Old nests attract mites, which can harm baby birds.

The boxes are usually placed in a clearing or near the edge of a wooded area, where the birds have ready access to insects.

Bluebirds will build their nests in these boxes in early spring. They will stay in the bluebird houses as late as July.