19171 The Ottawa Naturalist. '155 



MY BIRD HOUSES. 



A 



v% 



By Clyde L. Patch. 



As- it will soon be time to construct bird houses, which should be 

 in place a couple of weeks before the feathered tenants arrive, thus 

 giving the newness time to wear off, an account of my last summer's 

 experience may assist and encourage other members of the O. F. N. 

 Club. 



Until last spring I had supposed that a martin house was usually 

 in place two or three years before the birds discovered it, or at any 

 rate would nest in it; also, that the person owning the house was par- 

 ticularly lucky, and thirdly that the house must be situated in a large 

 open yard. 



Having been requested to furnish bird house plans for manual 

 training work, I built an experimental martin house, with twelve 

 compartments measuring o in. x 6 in. x 6 in., each having an entrance 



2 in. in diameter the bottom edge of which is 2 in. above the floor. 

 Across the outside of the house and 2 in. below the entrance holes is a 



3 in. platform, which forms a landing stage for the parent birds and a 

 play ground for the young when they first venture out. 



So, having constructed the house I, one evening, with the assist- 

 ance of a neighbor, erected it on a twenty foot pole in my sixteen by 

 twenty back yard in the Glebe, (Ottawa) expressing the hope that if 

 the wind didn't blow it down I might met tenants by 1920. Three davs 

 later Mrs. Patch informed me that house seekers had been about during 

 the morning, and upon looking out I saw a pair of those beautiful 

 opals of the air, commonly called tree swallows, exploring my apart- 

 ment house. A few days later they began carrying sticks and straws 

 from all over the neighborhood and alighting promiscuously on the 

 landing platform running under the three top holes, followed their 

 noses straight into the nearest hole, thus building three nests. Seeing 

 that this would never lead to a happy family, I constructed a box 6 in. 

 x 6 in. x 15 in. deep with a landing platform under the \)A in. 

 entrance hole and the overhanging eave of the sloping roof above it. A 

 day or so after placing this house on a near-by fifteen foot pole, the 

 swallows examined it and after driving off another pair of persistent 

 house-seekers, they abandoned the three nests in the martin house and 

 began house furnishing in the new home. Following a few days of 

 busy stick carrying the feather lining was added, and thereafter for 

 the next two weeks Lady Swallow was seen only a short time each day 

 when she trusted the four transparent and later delicate rose-coloured 

 eggs to the care of Mr. Swallow and fed in the immediate neighborhood. 

 Then one day to my great delight a martin lit on the martin house, 

 remaining a short time and returning next day with a mate. This pair 



