Early on Saturday, April 26, a team of volunteers installed forty-nine small birdhouses along the entire length of Hanover Avenue in The Fan District of Richmond, Virginia. They were built from chemical free, untreated lumber and were specifically sized to provide a safe haven for some of Richmond’s local song birds including wrens, blue birds, and finches from the unwelcome non-native species such as the Starling and the European Barn Swallow.

The installation was inspired by a combination of two local developments.

First, after years of feather poaching, deaths from pesticide and human encroachment on breeding grounds, a rookery of Blue Herons have recently established a nesting area on an island in the middle of the James River in downtown Richmond – a first for the city. According to a Richmond Times Dispatch interview with Mike Wilson, a research biologist with the College of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology, the herons prefer to avoid people but “are just running out of spaces that are not influenced by humans.”

Additionally, the Guerrilla Gardening movement has been catching on in Richmond. In 2006, Style Weekly reported an act of Guerrilla Gardening in an alley off Hanover Avenue adjacent to the new birdhouses. Also, a group called Tricycle Gardens has begun the reclamation of blighted urban spaces in some of Richmond’s poorest neighborhoods. Their efforts provide the city with locally grown food sources and a better understanding of the interconnectedness humans (can) have with nature.

The volunteers who installed the birdhouses have asked members of the community to tend the houses in the fall once the breeding season is complete. The houses have been designed with a hinged right panel for easy cleaning.

Note: The same copy (with photos) is posted here, too.

– The information above was provided by a group calling itself The Volunteers (volrva@gmail.com).