A bird sits on a perch on a bird house. (Tobias Kleinschmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
CHICAGO (CBS) — The west suburban town of Montgomery is hoping a new housing program will revive the town’s once flourishing population of bluebirds.
Montgomery trustee Stan Bond says the village has already built 50 bluebird houses and is ready to make another hundred if the demand is there.
He says Montgomery is now the ideal habitat for bluebirds. He says there are 23 retention ponds fringed with tall grass, which is the ecosystem bluebirds favor for feeding on insects.
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Bond says the next job is to recruit volunteers to watch the bluebird boxes.
Bluebirds don’t like competition from house sparrows and starlings, which are likely to move into bluebird houses and take over. So volunteers are needed to remove the nests of anything besides bluebirds.
Also, bluebirds will not move into a house that’s been occupied by another bird. So the volunteers must clean out the bluebird houses at the end of each season.
Volunteers are show up tonight at the village hall in Montgomery.
And Bond says he’s hoping if Montgomery succeeds, other towns up and down the Fox River will start their own bluebird housing developments
