Boxes perched on poles adjacent to open water are such a common sight on the Island that when they disappeared in Tod Inlet, folks noticed.
The sea of empty posts spurred a spiralling online conversation that, from John Creviston’s perspective, happily brought the purple martin back into the spotlight.
Traditionally the largest swallow in North America nests in a colony in groups of standing snags – brush killed by flood or fire – along the shore.
“Over time … people got rid of those because they were seen as valueless and dangerous, but they weren’t valueless to the birds,” Creviston said. The province also credits the decline in purple martines (progne subis) to competition from non-native bird species, and to housing and other development in nesting areas, as nesting sites dwindled to 10.
Down to five pairs across B.C. in the 1980s, the Peninsula man is among those behind the surge to save the once imperilled sparrow. The blue-listed, or vulnerable, subspecies has rebounded to more than 1,200 pairs and many nest in boxes built by Creviston.
“They’re dependent on us for the foreseeable future,” he said. “I feel that no one person can solve all the worlds problems but lots of little actions can make a difference.”
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He became part of the volunteer artificial nest box program that started in 1986. It has provided platforms for almost all B.C. purple martin nests today – more than 1,200 nesting pairs in 120 active colonies on the Lower Mainland and eastern coast of Vancouver Island.
The bird boxes in Tod Inlet, now down for repairs, are a whimsical showcase.
With some bright and unusual, themed after things such as Snoopy and Yellow Submarine, they’re far from Creviston’s only creations; his boxes house birds from Sidney spit and Patricia Bay right up to Powell River where ferry-boat themed boxes garner attention.
He discovered early on, he could have some fun with them, and continues to explore what the birds like.
He’d seen them up in the area in the late ’90s which spurred his curiosity, but it seemed no one knew their origin.
“There were now birds occupying them so I started looking after them,” he said. Ultimately he’d like to build artificial nest trees, but the boxes work, so that’s a theme he continues to explore. First Creviston created some that were round and mounted in different orientations, openings east, west, north and south to find out their preferences.
He found really only one crucial factor.
“I found out they didn’t have any preferences as long as they didn’t live in condos,” Creviston said.
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Those bird houses with dozens of holes in them, fine for the eastern subspecies, but not the B.C. locals.
“The western ones want to be in a colony, but don’t want to share walls,” he said. “It wasn’t so much what the boxes looked like, but no sharing walls.”
Creviston plans, tide and time willing, to get on a ladder, on a boat and return the boxes to the Tod Inlet pilings mid-March.
And visitors may see some new colourful and “crazy looking” ones, he said.
“You won’t be able to not notice them.”
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