There are bluebird houses you can buy that have a side door. There is a piece of clear plastic to keep the nest from falling out when you open this door .... you can see what is going on & check out the babies. Evidently, bluebirds will tolerate this if it’s not too frequent. My dad will be 90 in a few months ... he LOVES the bluebirds & watching them from the kitchen window. I think for his next birthday, we’ll be buying him a bluebird box with a ‘window’ to replace the one on the fence closest to the house. I’ll enjoy it too because sometimes we see the male/female hanging around the box & we’re not quite sure what is going on inside.
Last year, we happened to be watching at the very moment when the young bluebirds fledged. They were sitting on the fence (lowest board) & following their parents around for a couple of days, hanging out in the cedar trees nearby when they could fly a little better. They were SO much fun to watch. This year, we also had baby skunks in the back field ... a couple of years before, a red fox raised a litter in an old groundhog hole at the back of the barn. There is nothing like good old Mother Nature to take your mind off the ills of the world. :-)
I’ve got just under 20 acres of land and I have blue bird houses all over. No sparrows, just blue birds! I’d say I had at least 10 blue bird families this Spring.
The mockingbirds are at perpetual war with the blue birds and will even go into the nesting boxes and try to kill the babies. I’ve had to dispatch a few overly agressive mockers with my ole’ swee’ pea 22 rifle. The mockers are VERY intelligent, and know when I bring ole’ swee’ pea out, they better settle down and fly away! I have not had to shoot a mocker in at least a decade. They seem to know me and know I will get serious.
So I got some time and I am reminded of the story of the exploding possums.
I had been home from the hospital for heart bypass maybe two/three days. I was recovering, moving slow, but I could move. I wanted badly to get back to my morning exercises but at that time could just kind of shuffle around my track.
It all started the night before. Dog let out to pee, she goes nuts, barking, chasing something in the very dark yard. We could not see what she went after but this happens from time to time. Could be a fox, maybe a skunk as in your case. We don’t know cause dog chases and it’s gone.
That next morning I was excited, ready to begin my morning exercise routine, to return to life before bypass. My mother-in-law, that liberal lady I described upthread, she’s all in a twitter because she thinks I should not get up and about so soon.
Yet in the hospital they had me walking the halls the day of my operation and come on, first thing they want is to get you up and moving.
My mother-in-law, she’s a liberal. They think with their emotions. She didn’t want her son not to have a wife so she was over-protective of me.
So I go out, dog runs and does her first thing in the morning pee thing, sniffing the yard for bear poop, that sort of thing. I look around, take a deep breath, smile. Finally I am outdoors, I am alive, all is well.
I look down.
There is a dead baby possum at my feet. Before my scream could come out I look around. There are dead baby possums all over the yard, hundreds of them.
Well it turned out only to be about eight or so but there they were, dead hairless baby possums all over the yard.
Mind, unaffected by the bypass, begins to process. I supposed that all the barking and running of dog the prior night was after these baby possums’ mother. SHE got out of there but evidently the whole bundle of them hanging on her back fell off and over the night died from....exposure I guess, or whatever baby possums die of.
Quickly I realize I must keep dog away from dead baby possums as, well I don’t know what she’d do, frankly.
I “run “ into the house as fast as a recovering heart bypass patient can, grab a plastic grocery bag and my gauntlet garden gloves. I hurry back out and begin scooping all the dead possums in my grocery sack, minding dog still busy sniffing for bear poop in yard parts afar.
I got all the baby possums in the bag without dog suspecting a thing.
Husband tells mother-in-law later of the story and she gets all in a sniff, says I could die of post-operative infection or some such.
Heh.