Crow track

I sent money to a Bluebird Recovery program and I received their newsletter today. Much of it is devoted to a an upcoming Expo in another state and pictures sent in readers. However, there was a "tool kit" list that interested me. These were things you should take w/ you when you go out to visit your bluebird boxes (I go once a week during the nesting season). Among the items were a 2 inch paintbrush to clean out nests, a 3 inch plastic scrapper for those harder-to-get-out nests, and paste wax to apply to poles. At the end of the list was cotton balls and vanilla. That item surprised me until I read the article on the next page about how to keep black flies away from chicks. Empirical evidence showed vanilla applied around the nest openings and in dire cases, directly on the heads of the chicks, reduced the number of deaths due to black flies to zero. (The idea is that black flies are attracted to the nestling's respiration of carbon dioxide. The vanilla scent covers it up.)The article even had a recipe for how to make your own vanilla. Love to read this kind of stuff in the wintertime - makes spring seem a little closer