Introduction

 Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Mann. I am 33 years old and I have been actively supplying housing for cavity nesters such as Eastern Bluebirds & Tree Swallows since 2000, making 2020 my 20th season! I got my start at 13 years of age because I took a shop class and we made a standard wooden bird house. Of course when it was completed I took it home and mounted it to a fence post. My parents lived on 2 acres with pasture. I kid you not within minutes there was a blue colored bird sitting on this box.

 

Excited I had to find out what species of bird this was. I thought it was a Baltimore Oriel due to some orange I saw on it. I had to hop on the computer and dial up the internet and do some research on the world wide web. I believe it was around this time that I found the Bluebird L mailing list and subscribed to this list. Soon after I actually found out that the birds that found MY house were Eastern Bluebirds.

 

My parents had a pole barn so in the seasons to come I learned about house sparrows and how much of a problem they were. I tried all the passive tricks in the book. Finally I spent my hard earned money on a sparrow repeating trap. I remember coming home from work one day and had caught nearly 20! My mom didn't like that I had to dispatch them. My method was C02 with the ATV or car. 

 

Soon after I learned about Steve Gilbertson and ordered one Gilbertson box and then two more later. To this day I still have 5 of these boxes. I also learned about other cavity nesters called Tree Swallows, another reason for adding boxes. Still I was mounting them to fence posts (bad) and remember having two pairs of Bluebirds and several pairs of Swallows.

I moved out of my parents place to a house in Sidney Ohio with a long downhill narrow mostly wooded lot with a small clearing in the center. That's where I placed a gilbertson box on a pole with baffle and sure enough got a pair of bluebirds. I also put out a few more boxes and got chickadees, wrens, and sparrows (they're everywhere) I took my dogs for walks and about a mile behind my house was a large cemetery. I found a 3 nestbox trail there and somehow I found the man who put them up. I met with him and his wife and he was no longer able to monitor them. He mentioned two other boxes not far from the cemetery, I said I would look after those too. These boxes are slot boxes. In between the cemetery and the other two boxes sits the city water treatment plant. I saw several nest boxes mounted on the inside of the fence there. 

 

I got in contact with the owner who worked there and got those off the fences and onto poles with baffles and spread them out 300 feet and agreed to monitor them making this "trail" now 10 boxes in total. These boxes have oval hole entrances. Fortunately I work in Sidney so I just stop on the way home after work to check this trail and take pictures once a week or every other week.

 

We lived in Sidney for about four years and after getting married, my wife and I decided to build a house in a new subdivision in Piqua Ohio and moved in October of 2016. We live on .30 acre lot with a mature trees and fence row in the back and small but open side yards. We added a privacy fence in the back to keep our two small chihuahua mix dogs and now two children in the yard.

 

I have room for one gilbertson box in each side yard and have been successful every year attracting bluebirds and tree swallows. More info to come in the coming posts!