Volunteer Project ‘For the Birds’ in Montgomery

Naturalist Jeremy Berger of Montgomery believes the old movie quote: "If you build it, they will come." In fact, he knows it's true, after building a few birdhouses for his yard.

“Two years in a row I’ve been able to get tree swallows nesting in there,” said the Kaneland School District fifth-grade science teacher. “It just goes to show that if you build it, something will use it.”

He made a couple of nesting box samples and presented them to the Montgomery Beautification Committee as a way to attract more waterfowl to the area.

Now Berger is partnering with village Trustee Stan Bond and the committee to round up volunteers to help make about 50 birdhouses, to be placed on signage in the village’s water basins.

“We’re planning to spend a weekend cutting the lumber, and we’re asking for volunteers to help assemble these houses,” Bond said. “We have a company that agreed to install them for us.”

Committee members work to make the the community more attractive and inviting.

Through the nesting box initiative, Bond would especially like to attract more bluebirds to the village, which he says are well suited to the area but have largely been driven out by land development.

He said bluebirds prefer to be near water.

“They like to come back to the same place,” Bond said. “So every year we have success in having them there’s a very good chance they’ll come back to Montgomery next year and raise a family.”

Both Berger and Bond are hoping the community will join them in encouraging more waterfowl to come back to the area.

“We’re trying to think of something we could do in the hard times to make Montgomery a nicer place to live and give people more enjoyment, but that doesn’t cost a bunch of money,” Bond said.

For more information about the initiative, contact Bond at stan@stanbond.com.