Bird Watching: Placement of a Chickadee box?, 2 by Chillybean

Chillybean wrote:
Well, those Tree Swallows had a successful brood of six young which left the nest on Wednesday. They left mite free!!! I read a tip to put a handful of wood ash with the shavings and I was tickled to see that it worked. Our Barn Swallows had mites last year, so we knew what they look like.

We were blessed to have Mama Tree Swallow that hatched last year, so she was brown yet. It is so nice to be able to tell the difference between the Mr. and Mrs.

The Kestrels were not so successful. After about a week or more of not seeing any around, my husband looked into the box yesterday and found one cracked egg. It was not pecked open, but had a single crack. There was nothing else in the box to show there had been any feeding in there.

Now back to our Chickadee box.
Today a male and female Bluebird showed interest, but like the Tree Swallows, cannot fit! Sigh... We had not yet cleaned out the Swallow box, so have done that quickly. It is air drying in the sun after scrubbing with bleach. We will put it up before we leave to go shopping.

I know nothing about Bluebirds, but enjoy most all birds. We learn so much by observing the nesting birds we have here. The Swallows were very approachable within reason, so it allowed for some nice photos.

This will mean a big fight next year, but learned Bluebirds and Tree Swallows can nest close together. So we will put up two boxes where the one is now. We had already planned on placing more boxes around our property in the pasture.

The Chickadee box was only used by perching Robins, Red-wingeds, etc. But also we had to recently evict wasps. I thought I read some place there is a way to prevent this. Vaseline on the interior walls maybe?? That would be icky to get off when cleaning out the box.

Oh, where the Chickadees went, we do not know. :) The latest plan is to probably remove the Chickadee box- move it elsewhere and (yes, we're thinking huge!) build a Chimney Swift tower in that south yard.