Birdhouse advice for east-end Toronto

[Julie]

hi

I am wondering if any of the old-city Toronto residents can tell me about nest boxes. We have the usual small TO backyard with a shed, large lilac bush, blue spruce, bird bath and two feeders. There's a large old maple in next door's front yard.

Our next door neighbours have 12 plus cats, none neutered and all roaming, so that's a huge factor in all the bird stuff we do. We also have a couple of very aggressive and persistent local squirrels and one very aggressive resident male raccoon. Everything is carefully placed and pest proof.

We were given a pretty decent little bird house for Christmas; it unfortunately has a non removable perch, but does have an extra thick entrance hole that's about four mm larger than 1 1/4 inches in diameter (if you'll excuse the imperial metric mix. )It has a good access hatch for cleaning and inspection.

We have a large resident flock of house sparrows and another of starlings. So we figure we need to shrink the entrance hole a little.

We'd like to know if any old city residents have had indigenous species use a bird house, and if so what they were, what you had to do, and where you placed the bird house. Which species are the most likely to use a house? I don't even know which cavity nesters tend to set up shop in the city over the summer.

thanks!

[Bluffs Birder]

Hi Julie,

I'm also in the same boat (minus all those cats!, there's only 1 that seems to roam our yard).  I'm also in the East-end of the city with an average size backyard.  Last summer I built a small nest box with about a 1 inch hole in the hopes of luring in a Chickadee or Wren.  So far only one Chickadee has poked his head in and looked around.  We have a large number of House Sparrows (50-60) that frequent the yard on a daily basis to use the feeders, bird bath, and pond.  Also, there are 3 nest boxes that the sparrows use each spring/summer.  Don't know if I've ever seen a more aggressive bird than the House Sparrow, they really don't like other birds, especially ones smaller than themselves.  Not sure if they'll let any other bird species nest in the same area or not.  Time will tell.  Should I fill the box with nesting material or not, does this help?

If anyone has had any success with simular setups, we'd love to hear from you.

Thanks,
Walter

[mr.sharp-photo]

i was going to set up a box of some sort...
but my backyard seems to really attract sparrows. lots of them.
this year, i've seen the occasional cardinal pair, a downy woodpecker, some robins, a blue jay and two mourning doves.
so i'm kind of hesitant to set up a box if its just going to be another location for the sparrows to gather.