Journal – Sunday Afternoon Birdhouse Maintenance

I spent the afternoon dismantling the old birdhouse my friend had given me and putting up a new one. There were a pair of finches checking out the chickadee house and trying to get into it. Someone was worried that we would come out sometime and see one of them stuck in the entrance hole. I figured that would be nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some vice grips and vegetable oil but was talked into getting a new house. ;)

The old birdhouse was admittedly getting rather run down but I was a bit sad to let it go. Some wind had blow part of the roof off. The resulting water damage was molding the siding.

The remaining roofing was in rather good shape and only dated at 2012. I toyed with the idea of taking the roofing back to the store and claiming it had failed prematurely and caused irreparable water damage to the priceless custom built birdhouse as a result. Probably a hard sell to get them to pay for the water damage and not exactly the nicest thing to do, but fun to think about anyway, lol.

I removed all the metal fasteners and put them in the recycling bin - some of the galvanized screws were still good and not rusty. I thought about saving them and putting them in my bug out box just in case everything manufactured becomes priceless and tradable for loaves of bread or something. I have so much stuff like that I figured it wasn’t worth saving so I threw them out.

The wood I put on my mushroom growing area to shade the mushrooms. I hope the paint won’t bother them too much, they were looking like they were starting to spread out a bit and might actually colonize the log I found and produce some fruit.

I hung the new house on the fence where the old one was. The new house is really nice, I hope the finches like it if they come back looking for a new place - the entrance is just the right size for them from what I read.

Chickadee House Cleaning

I cleaned out the chickadee house while I was at it. What a mess! There must have been a dozen different types of bugs and spiders living in it. Probably almost as many different types of insects as are living in our house. (Dog likes to bring things in from the yard you know - it’s not like we don’t clean or anything) ;)

There was way more material than what I found in the starling house. Lots of soft comfy moss and hair. I could picture the six to eight little ones nesting very pleasantly in there.

At one point last season there was a big piece of moss stuck in the door for the longest time and I was worried that something had happened but everyone left the nest just fine. I guess they must have closed the door after they left or something.

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Thanks for reading! Your support is greatly valued! All pictures are taken by me with my Galaxy S7.