Building The Love Shack

Last Fall we took down the birdhouses and brought them home. When I got them home I cleaned them and noticed that the paint had faded and the parts were loose.  This started me on a planned project for the Winter.  Fix the birdhouses. From there the plan to expand the collection into a Village began.

I bought a few to work on, which created the blog I wrote, How to build a birdhouse. Then friends and Husband bought me a few as Christmas gifts and the original ones got repaired. Soon our collection went from one to ten in a few months.

The problem came quickly as I was running out of time. Spring was here and that meant our friends the Purple Martin’s would be here from Brazil and ready to nest. We needed to get the houses up.

 

This is the lovely male Purple Martin.

 

Up to the cottage we went with the pruning equipment, the ladder, and the birdhouses.

Husband climbed up on the ladder and cleaned up our two big trees in front of the cottage and then got back on the ladder to start putting up the birdhouse. Once the original two houses were hung, we suddenly had company.  The first of the female Purple Martin came to check out house number one.

 

 

Soon a second female came, and the start of an ongoing dispute on who was moving into birdhouse number one. The first to arrive had her heart set on this one birdhouse and decided she was claiming it.

The best part of this ongoing disagreement was she decided she was staying on guard and sat on the branch within arms reach watching Husband the whole time he was hanging the houses in the tree. The only time she would leave was to case away bird number two and then she would come back and sit and watch.

Soon we had two birds, then we had three and the numbers kept growing. As each house was going up, the tree condo’s were getting selected. Our timing couldn’t have been better to hang the houses as the ladies were ready to nest.

 

 

The interesting thing about this birdhouse is it was the first birdhouse we hung last year. It was also one I cleaned, repainted, and removed an old nest from. It was also the first one hung when our lovey ladybird came to claim it as her own. We’re wondering if this was her home last year. We watched her fly across the field and come right to it.

The second one was hung and then we added the new collection for this year.

 

 

The new collection starts here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are three more I’m working on to get ready for Sunday, as we better get back up to hang them, as we wouldn’t want to have unhappy tenants.

 

 

In case you are wondering what else is hung in the tree.  The yellow thing you see in the center of the tree is a fake wasp nest. I discovered this paper fake wasp nest a few years ago at the dollar store. To my disbelief, it worked and kept the wasp away from building on the cottage.

Apparently, the wasp will not build where there is another wasp nest, but they do love to build in birdhouses. I did put the vaseline at the top of the inside of the houses, but for a dollar and we are already up in the tree. Why not?  The birds checked it out and it didn’t bother them that it was there.

Now its time to sit back and watch the birds with a cup of tea in the early morning when everyone else is still asleep. My favorite way to start the day and yet another thing the Love Shack added to my life.