With hundreds of homes to his credit, Richard B. Fischer, Cornell University professor emeritus of environmental education, is a major player among Ithaca landlords. Location, location, location. And a few amenities.
Bluebirds are actually very adaptable.
They do accept humans around them. So Fischer and a longtime colleague, Linda Buttel, a computer programmer in the Cornell Theory Center, surveyed the sites of their most successful bluebird nestings to see what the locations have in common. Licensed bird-banders Richard B. Fischer and Linda Buttel of Cornell University check one of the 119 Eastern bluebird boxes they maintain, while grandsons Dickie, left, and Eduardo Fischer, visiting from Nacadoges, Texas, hold baby bluebirds. From the aerial viewpoint of a male bluebird seeking a nest site, Fischer recalls the miles of open farm fields that once filled the Northeast landscape. Holes in wooden fence posts then were among the bluebirds' favorite nest sites, and so were cavities in trees excavated by woodpeckers or other animals.