Bluebird Project Gets Some Expert Help

A group of Montgomery residents is hoping to attract more bluebirds to town. And last week, they got some help from an expert.

Roger Hotham is a past president of the Kane County Audobon Society, and a lifelong birder. At 75 years old, he’s had a lot of experience with what works and what doesn’t when it comes to attracting birds, and on Thursday night, he shared that experience with about 16 interested people at .

Montgomery’s Beautification Committee, chaired by Trustee Stan Bond, is hoping to bring bluebirds back to the village, after decades of development that drove them away. The committee, with the help of dozens of volunteers, assembled 50 bluebird boxes, and put them up around town.

The goal is to attract a bluebird to each box, where they will nest for the season. And bluebirds are creatures of habit – they will return to the boxes they call home the following year.

Hotham said there are two keys to attracting bluebirds – the boxes, and the habitats they’re placed in. The boxes, he said, should sport holes no more than 1.5 inches wide, big enough for bluebirds but not starlings. They should open from the front or the side, to make for easy cleaning. And they should be mounted on pipes, since raccoons can’t climb smoother surfaces.

Bluebirds, Hotham said, don’t seek out earthworms like robins do. They eat insects, which means their habitats must be insect-friendly. Highly-manicured back yards, he said, won’t do for bluebird boxes – they need to be in grassy areas, like retention ponds with native plantings, which is where the committee posted many of the village’s birdhouses.

And each birdhouse will need a monitor, to check and see if bluebirds have found their way in and built a nest. The trick is to correctly identify a bluebird nest – house wrens will leave twigs, tree swallows will make nests with feathers on them, but bluebirds will craft neat, circular nests out of grass, Hotham said.

“I can’t tell you the feeling you’re going to get the first time you realize you’ve got a bluebird in the box,” Hotham said.

If you get a house sparrow instead of a bluebird, Hotham said, it may take some work to get it to leave. But a good tip, he said, is to cut a small rain hole in the top of the box. Bluebirds will put up with rain, and house sparrows won’t.

Monitors will be tasked with checking the box at least once a week, and dealing with predators looking to eat the bluebirds. If the bluebirds find successful habitats in Montgomery, they’ll return, and within a few years, Bond said, the village’s skies may be full of them again.

The Beautification Committee plans to put up more bluebird boxes next year, Bond said. The committee is seeking monitors for the boxes – if you’re interested, contact Bond at 630-440-1007, or Montgomery’s public works director Mike Pubentz at 630-896-9241.