With hundreds of homes under his wing, Richard Fischer is a major landlord in Ithaca, New York. And a few amenities. Knowledge of ideal bluebird territory could help rebuild populations of a species some people never thought they'd see again.
Bluebirds are actually very adaptable.
They do accept humans around them. To underscore his point, Fischer mentioned the nest box he maintains near a family swimming pool in a busy backyard, where bluebirds have nested in 10 of the past 11 years. People apparently aren't the principal issue, although manmade changes to the environment kept New York's official state bird on the list of species of special concern until recently. So Fischer, a Cornell University professor emeritus of environmental education, and 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. From the aerial viewpoint of a male bluebird seeking a nest site, Fischer recalled the miles of open farm fields that once filled the Northeast landscape.