Post Falls man has put up homes for his feathered friends for 60 years

POST FALLS — For 60 years, Elton Turcotte has been building birdhouses.

That comes out to a lot. Try 600. 

“I’m 72 years old now and when I first started, I would have to go around town with a wagon because I didn’t have one of these things you call a driver's license,” Turcotte said. 

When he would find the right tree suited for a birdhouse, he’d ask the owner for permission to put it up. The people who said yes were interested in wildlife and helpful. 

“It taught me a lot about people as a young kid,” he recalled. 

He makes about 10 every year and places them from Post Falls to Cocolalla. During a recent venture, his friend had to fend off a bird interested in the real estate to install it.  

“The bird took five swipes at him,” Turcotte recalled. “By the time that he got the birdhouse up, got back down the tree and got the ladder, the bird was already sitting on top of it like it was saying, 'This is ours.'”  

He builds a mix of larger birdhouses for ducks and smaller 6-inch-by-6-inch birdhouses. 

“Lately, I’ve been putting three in one and making a big condo out of them,” Turcotte said. “If you go along the Chain Lakes, you’ll see birdhouses hanging everywhere.”

Turcotte tries to make his houses suited to bluebirds or swallows for the smaller houses, but he never knows what kind of wildlife will move into a birdhouse.

He’s convinced a squirrel or two have enjoyed his birdhouses over the years. 

The reason he tries to set up houses around the Chain Lakes comes back to the changing landscape and trees available for wildlife to call their own. 

“There aren’t many trees there to nest in, all of the trees that were hollow back then, they’re all gone,” Turcotte said. 

One spot raised multiple families of Common Goldeneyes and wood ducks in one year, much to the delight of his friend, who eagerly reported back on bird activity at his birdhouse. 

Having done this ritual for six decades, Turcotte’s favorite way of setting up homes for avian friends is to go out on the boat with a friend, take a small ladder and make a day of it.

Wood duck populations have expanded due to the installation of artificial nest boxes in the area.  

Coeur d’Alene Audubon President Ted Smith shared the importance of work like Turcotte’s in providing surrogate housing for cavity-nesting bird species.   

“Nesting cavities are becoming very hard for birds to find because we as humans tend to cut down the trees that support cavities, Smith said. 

Smith called Turcotte’s annual practice of putting up birdhouses “good stuff.” 

“There are several species that have become quite dependent on artificial nest boxes including our state bird, the mountain bluebird,” Smith said.

    Elton Turcotte shows off a freshly built house for ducks to live in. Turcotte likes to make birdhouses each year and install them around North Idaho.