One of the best things we could provide for raising young is a dead tree. Nest boxes are necessary only because our society has such an aversion to keeping dead trees, in other words, snags.
We’re not lucky enough to have a large dead tree ourselves, but if our sugar maple dies, we’ll cut it off at a height where safety isn’t an issue and wait for the birds to create nesting cavities.
This tree did have one dead limb large enough for a cavity, and one year a downy woodpecker worked diligently for quite a while creating a cavity.
It successfully raised babies one year, but when it returned the next year, a starling evicted it and raised its babies there instead.
Sadly, the following year we had to have that limb and others removed since they were close to the road and no longer safe.
We asked them to save that limb, though, and we attached it to the dead pear, hoping it would serve as a natural nest cavity.
Bad idea! The weight of the additional limb pulled the dead branch off the pear tree over the winter.
Chickadees!
Our pear snag lost both of its major limbs during the winter, leaving stumps. We were surprised to see not one but TWO chickadees excavating in each of these. (If you look closely you can see one in the upper left and one in the middle right hard at work.)
This chickadee has created a cavity here, but is it really possible that it could raise babies in a cavity that seems so exposed to rain since it’s tilted up? And would it be possible to make it large enough to accommodate babies and a mother?
This chickadee worked until it could enter so far that we could hardly see the tip of its tail.
Eventually, though, it must have decided that it wasn’t large enough to accommodate a nest of babies and it moved to one of our nest boxes.
Other birds
We enjoyed watching these brown-headed nuthatches working hard for a couple of weeks while visiting our daughter in North Carolina. Even though she had installed a brown-headed nuthatch nest box not far from this tree, they seemed to prefer building their own in a cavity.
(Note: Brown-headed nuthatches, whose vocalizations are like a squeaky toy, are a species that NC Audubon has chosen as needing some assistance, so they provide very inexpensive, well-built nest boxes to help in the effort.)
Resources
- Van Vleck:
- Snags in the home habitat – photos and description of how to install a snag
- Cavity Conservation:
- Value of dead trees and many more resources on how to safely retain snags!
Reflections
A few years ago my driveway was crowded with the remains of two great snags felled by a neighbor out of fear or for aesthetic reasons. I had often watched flickers, hairy woodpeckers, and pileated woodpeckers work these very trunks. … The actions of my neighbor are typical and in some situations justified, but our intolerance of dead vegetation severely limits one of the most creative forces in subirdia.
~ John Marzluff; Welcome to Subirdia, p. 53