Saturday September 7th was a glorious day, for weather and for the record setting number of nestboxes put together that day! Over 150 Bluebird, Flicker, and Nuthatch/Chickadee nest boxes were built in less than five hours, a Chapter Record!
Even better than a record, this means that we will have that many more nestboxes for our neighbors and friends to purchase at the Alternative Gift Fair (Saturday, November 9th & Sunday, November 10th, 2024), our annual Spring Nestbox Sales at the Evergreen and Conifer King Soopers, and online through our websites. The purchase and placement of these nestboxes is critical for the cavity-nesting birds in the Bear Creek Watershed as fire mitigation, undertaken to protect human lives and property, often results in the loss of suitable nest trees and cavities needed for breeding success.
Thirty-six enthusiastic and talented volunteers (thanked individually elsewhere in this eDipper) assembled 50 Bluebird, 80 Chickadee/Nuthatch, 15 Flicker boxes (plus a few spares of each kind) in less than 5 hours, including set up, takedown, and storage of the finished boxes! That’s a rate of 30 boxes per hour!!! We cannot thank all our volunteers enough; their energy and enthusiasm were so evident and really made those five hours zip by!
All the great work done on build day would not have been accomplished without incredible work done by other volunteers ahead of build day.
Key to our success was the preparation of parts prior to Build Day. A whole other crew of volunteers (also thanked elsewhere in this eDipper) cut parts to size, marked up pieces for assembly, drilled openings, mounted predator guards, and sorted and boxed parts. Without this multiday effort we could not have accomplished so much on Build Day,
Good wood was critical to our success, and for that Evergreen Audubon thanks Erin Moore and Moore Lumber for providing the highest quality cedar! The quality of the wood made every step of preparation and assembly easier and more efficient. Thank you, Erin!
As a long-time nestbox builder, I was just overwhelmed and humbled by everyone’s generosity with their time and effort. After spending so much time on this project, seeing things go so well and how much fun, joy, and accomplishment was felt by our volunteers brought me to tears-tears of joy!
On behalf of Evergreen Audubon, our sincere thanks to all for your help in making this year’s Nestbox Build the most successful in the nearly 50 years that we have been building nestboxes!
Ed Furlong, Chapter Programs Director, Evergreen Audubon
