A couple of years ago at a Bluebird Recovery Program conference, I learned about a modification to the Peterson houses that the folks at Bluebirds Across Nebraska were having some good success with eliminating wasp nests on these houses. The ideal thing, of course, would be to build your bluebird houses using this modified plan, but you can also make over your old style houses with just a few cuts of the jigsaw. In the picture below, you can see where I've cut away a triangular shape at the bottom of the house.
This eliminates that dark, sheltered area where wasps loved putting their nests (the orange-ish colored wood on each side shows where the sidewalls were cut away.
I also had to cut a couple inches off the bottom of the door to complete this makeover (pink arrow below shows how much of the door was cut off). This makeover is purely cosmetic and affects only the outside of the house. There is no reduction to the nesting area inside the box.
It was beautiful outside this afternoon and a perfect day for working on this task, however it takes a lot longer than I thought it would and I only managed to complete makeovers on four of my bluebird houses. But I did get those completed houses put back up and while I was putting the houses on the poles where the bluebirds nested last year, I could hear Mr. Bluebird singing over in the neighbor's backyard, so I'm hoping I got these houses ready in time for him to find a mate and start moving in.Check out these beautiful California strawberries we found at the grocery store today--super sale priced at $1.48 a pound. These were the two biggest ones in the container, and boy were they yummy!
