Bluebird houses

On Monday, January 30, our neighbor and bird expert Jim came over and set up three new bluebird houses at Habitat Home.  The houses are located in the savanna area along the northern path. Savanna areas are excellent habitat for other birds as well such as Blue Jays, Hawks, and Orioles to name a few.  These houses will have to be monitored to remove any house sparrow nests.  House sparrows will attack and kill both young and adult bluebirds and destroy their eggs. Another pest of the bluebirds are raccoons, snakes and opossums.  The white tubing should  prevent any of them from climbing the pole and getting into the boxes.  Yet another pest of bluebirds living in boxes is the blowfly.  Their larva will suck the blood of nestlings at night.  But a natural control of blowflies are parasitic wasps which will over winter in the boxes.  So it is a good idea to leave old nesting material in the boxes until just before the new breeding season begins.  Also bluebirds often roost in nest boxes in winter and the nesting material will add insulation.
We have not seen any bluebirds on these warm winter days but soon we will. Hopefully there will be nesting pairs in each of the boxes our expert bird neighbor installed here. Thanks Jim!

Blackout

Today (January 18 only), Habitat Home's header is blacked out in sympathy with the internet protests of the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation in Congress. While not normally political in nature, Habitat Home is engaged in information exchange. We worry that any legislation which allows the creation of a federal framework for regulation and control (the real intent of this legislation, stated copyright/piracy feel-good intentions notwithstanding) with vague directives and likely no real oversight, is too dangerous for the future of unfettered information exchange in particular and digital innovation in general. Is it too paranoid to say that the futures of Habitat Home and its parent Blogger are at stake? It's less paranoid, and not unreasonable, to imagine that this legislation is designed to allow the federal government to create new winners and losers, seemingly its big business these days.

Learn about what's going on, and write your Congressional representatives.

Tractors

If you live in the country you need a tractor.  Here at Habitat Home it mows the savanna area every year, maintains the driveway, transports rocks, and enables us to be neighborly country folks.  Tractors are just the thing for towing city folk who end up in the ditch on their drive out to see beauty in a snowy countryside.