A thriving bird population is an indicator of a healthy habitat. To that end, the D&R Greenway is celebrating open space with a bird house exhibit and fundraiser.
By: Anthony Stoeckert
Somewhere flying around out there are the lucky birds who will be living in homes designed by New Jersey’s most well- known architects.
Some will be living in a barn, others may like the Victorian mansion, and a large Japanese-style dwelling is sure to be the perfect domicile for one feathered family.
These homes, and many others certain to be the envy of any bird neighborhood, will be on display at the D&R Greenway Land Trust as part of It’s a Bird’s Life Avian Art & Science opening May 21. The birdhouses will be on display through June 9, when they will be auctioned off during the Greenway’s gala, Celebrate Open Space. The exhibit also includes artwork depicting birds and their habitats combined with information on the Greenway’s efforts to preserve those habitats on view through July 13.
There’s more to the birdhouses than their nifty designs. They’re "species-specific," designed to fit the needs of certain types of birds. According to Bill Rawlyk, naturalist and director of land preservation for D&R Greenway, the factors taken into consideration include size, the openings of the homes and their height.
So a house for bluebirds should have an opening that’s about an inch-and-a-half wide. "That will discourage some of the birds, like starlings, that would displace them," Mr. Rawlyk says. A larger hole, though, won’t discourage smaller birds from attempting to take up roots there. "Sometimes wrens will occupy bluebird houses and fill them up with sticks," he continues.
A purple martin home designed by Catherine M. Knight of Knights Associates was made from a streetlight. The glass windows were replaced with wood, one panel of which has three circular openings that are wider than the bluebirds’ front door. Purple martins need homes that are about 15 feet in the air, so the house will come with a column and instructions on how to set it up, completing the streetlight effect.
A home in the shape of a barn was built by Dale Emde, a craftsman with the New Jersey Barn Co., whose mother, Laurie Emde, is director of operations at the land trust. The barn was built from wood that’s about 150 to 200 years old (New Jersey Barn renovates antique barns and other structures, and salvages wood from old buildings).
The "barn" is about two feet wide, but its nesting area is only a fraction of this. That’s because the bluebirds it’s built for won’t settle into a larger area.
"We wanted to get the scale of the barn right, but if you had the whole thing opened, then it wouldn’t be proper proportion for the birds," Mr. Emde says. "So we had to partition it so that bluebirds would like it."
The barn’s roof is made of corrugated steel, split up into several panels. "At first we were going to do one solid panel, and I put it on and it didn’t look right," Mr. Emde says. "So I went and cut it down into smaller sheets to give it the right texture." White, etched lettering that reads "New Jersey Barn Co." looks like it’s been on the back of the barn forever.
A house built by John Clarke of Clarke Caton Hintz stems from Mr. Clarke’s fairly new interest in woodworking. Its shape is pretty traditional for a birdhouse, but it’s made from pieces of wood that slide together no screws or pegs were used.
"In the architectural world, mine would be a neo-traditional birdhouse," Mr. Clarke says. "It looks like a birdhouse, it uses traditional shapes, but it’s constructed in an interesting way."
The homes are the bird equivalent of an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, though without the heartbreaking emotional element. Instincts draw birds to the houses that are designed for them, but they’re not concerned with aesthetics.
"They’re looking for an entirely different set of criteria than the artists," Mr. Rawlyk says. "But the beauty of this exhibit is that the two different things can go together."
So a house designed for bluebirds by Max Hayden can resemble a Victorian home with a front dotted with windows. The windows aren’t real, though, they’re carved indentations painted black, providing an illusion of openings. (Apparently, birds are smarter than a reporter who tried to poke a finger through the indentations.)
The architects were provided information on what different species of birds need in a home, then were free to create anything that fit those parameters. So the Greenway had no idea they were going to get a converted streetlight as one of the models.
"We know what birds need in order to breed and sustain and to thrive, but (the architects) made them special and unique and functional," says Jo-Ann Munoz, director of communications for the D&R Land Trust.
Variety in design was important because New Jersey is home to more than one type of bird habitat.
"Unlike, say, Kansas, which has exactly one kind of bird habitat, grass-lined prairie habitat, our region has five different kinds of avian habitat," Ms. Munoz says. These include the deep woods of the Sourlands, which, according to Ms. Munoz, is home to 65 to 70 different species of neo-tropical migratory birds who travel from the Yucatan and either nest there and breed, or rest before flying further north to breed. There are also grassland bird habitats in New Jersey and edge birds, which live on the edges of forest.
The houses will be sold during a silent auction at the Celebrate Open Space gala. The evening will be catered by Mediterra with music from Michael Patrick and the Suburban Hillbillies. A live auction will be held to raise funds to help the land trust preserve its 10,000th acre (Ms. Munoz says there are 250 acres to go in order to reach that goal).
Mr. Rawlyk says the bird-themed activities are appropriate because birds are an important indicator species, meaning that if the bird population is on the decline, that usually means the habitat quality has declined for all species.
"The complexity and the richness of the habitat has declined, so we’ve lost something more than just birds (if the bird population declines)," he says. "If birds are doing well, that’s a good indication that we’ve done our job well."
It’s a Bird’s Life Avian Art & Science is on view at the D&R Greenway Land Trust’s Johnson Education Center, One Preservation Place, Princeton, May 21-July 13 (birdhouses can be viewed through June 9). Opening reception: May 24, 5-8 p.m. Hours: Thurs.-Sat., 1-3 p.m. Admission is free. Celebrate Open Space will be held June 9, 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $150; (609) 924-4646; www.drgreenway.org