For the Birds

A little info from the Brooklyn Paper on some color showing up on the shores of the Gowanus recently:

"Twenty-five new brightly hued birdhouses now line the 1.8-mile canal, thanks to the efforts of a foursome of North Carolinians who hatched the initiative, called the Canal Nest Colony. The project started two years ago with just five shelters.

The bad news? Birds are just as picky about their homes as the humans who shun living alongside a famously polluted canal, recently named a Superfund site. Indeed, this project is suffering from a case of the empty nest syndrome.

“The birdhouses aren’t being used yet because it takes a while for the birds to get used to them,” explained Hans Hesselein, a South Slope landscape architect who helped found the initiative along with college friends Thomas Ryan, David Moses, and Andrew Nicholas."