2 THE A OU DU BOW) BU eae 
starlings, English sparrows or red-headed woodpeckers, while a box sup- 
plemented with a perch and placed well up on an exposed tree often rewards 
me with crested flycatchers. For bluebirds, nail the box to a strong fence 
post, one side paralleling the barbed wire. There should be no brush, weeds 
A most effective yard box. 
Bluebird entering artificial post nest. A slab has been 
removed from the opposite side. A cavity was 
chiselled out and the slab serewed back into position. 
or trees close to the boxes as this encourages shrikes, snakes, and mice. 
However, if there is a right angle fence with trees or brush a few feet away, 
it seems to add to the desirability. 
At Quincy, the bluebirds arrive in late February and the boxes are 
filled with nests and eggs by the last week in March. 
Nesting is almost constant, many boxes having three separate nests 
through the summer. Banding has proved that a mother does not return 
to nest in the same box, although I occasionally find one nesting several 
miles away in another box along the same route. 
The worst danger to nesting is freezing weather. On three occasions 
I have lost twelve to fifteen hundred eggs because of a freeze during the 
first week in April. However, after two weeks, new mothers appear and 
build grass nests over the old frozen complement of eggs and incubation 
proceeds normally. The great misfortune in this delayed nesting lies in 
the fact that the bluebirds now have to compete for nests with the house 
wrens which arrive about April 15. On such years, the number of. eggs 
pierced by wrens is far in excess of the normal destruction. 
