Our club of dedicated volunteers maintain about 5000 birdhouses in the Calgary area. Most are set up on fence posts, three per mile. Because of these, about 1000 Mountain Bluebird pairs nested in 2009.
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About Me
- Andrew Stiles
- When I was in Grade Four, a trip to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary inspired me to begin a lifelong effort to help save the Mountain Bluebird. Inquiring about a stack of birdhouses there, I learned that because introduced Starlings and House Sparrows have displaced our native birds from their traditional nesting sites, they needed more homes. Building my first 50 boxes out of scrap plywood took me an entire winter using hand tools. That spring I was on my way to becoming a bluebird trail monitor thanks to mentoring by Inglewood's naturalists, but success was slim with only one nest! Undeterred, I built fifty more boxes and increased my bluebird percentage to 20! After quitting in Junior High because of peer pressure, I resumed with the help of my father (Don Stiles) and helped to network fellow enthusiasts into the Calgary Area Nest-box Monitors. Today it continues as one of the most successful grassroots conservation efforts on the prairies, maintaining 5000 boxes that produce over 10000 young birds annually!
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