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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • VoL 123, No. 4. December 2011 
hio. USA. PVC nLSt ' Ube moun,ed to utlIlt y P° le w ‘th Tree Swallow present, NASA Plum Brook Station, Sandusky. 
and changed our focus to report on successful use 
of a novel cavity design by native species across 
cavity size Thus, we report only descriptive 
statistics with regard to species and nesting data. 
METHODS 
We conducted our study on the 2,200-ha 
Nationa Aeronautic and Space Administration 
Ohfo l ka u u Stati ° n ,PB »' Eric Countv. 
Ohio. USA. Habitat within PB differs from the 
surrotmdmg mix of agricultural and suburban 
u7T Sed ° f tJ ° gWOod spp.; 
39/c), old field and grasslands (-31%), open 
woodlands (-15%), and mixed hardwood forests 
( 11 %) interspersed with abandoned and actively 
used structures. and paved roads that circle and 
restrierea P ' Um Brook S,alion has 
restricted public access. 
We attached 100. 27.5-cm long x 9 5 . cm 
?X“f r n' yVi " yl Ch '° ridc (PVC) lubes horizon- 
prior to tte 2009 bmT 8 PiPC SlrapS) <R S- *> 
positioned the tubes facing the roadway to 
facilitate observations during the experiment, as 
opposed to maintaining an easterly or southeast- 
erly frontage. Previous experiments with nest 
boxes on PB reported no effects of entrance 
direction on starling nesting (Dolbeeret al. 1988. 
Belant et al. 1998, Seamans et al. 2001 . White and 
Blackwell 2003). 
Each tube was placed 3 m above the ground 
with an aluminum predator guard mounted below 
the tube. The ends of each tube were sealed with a 
PVC cap, and the 5.1-cm diameter entrance, 
drilled into one end. was covered with tape until 
27 April 2009. We checked each tube week!) 
after opening the tubes: date, presence of nest 
material, total number and species of eggs p^ 1 ’ 1- 
and number and species of young were recorded 
at the time of each check. We followed our nest- 
check protocol through nest completion (presence 
of young). We did not follow these nests through 
fledging and data collection ended on - 1 Aug 11 ' 1 
2009. 
We further investigated whether starlings used 
these newly designed^tubes in 2010, assuming m 
novelty associated with the first year was no 
