“I’d rather a bluebird raised her young in my birdhouse than some fella hung it over his fireplace.” — Why a seventy-two-year-old Ottawa Valley wood carver is letting his last hand-carved birdhouses go far under gallery price, before his right eye gives out for good.

Every April, tree swallows and bluebirds come back to Ontario after a long trip north. The first thing they need is a hole. Not a branch, not a bush. A hole in wood, the right size, where they can raise their young.

For most of them, there isn’t one. The old dead trees have been cut down for firewood. The rotten fence posts have been pulled out and replaced with steel. The cheap birdhouse from the hardware store has a hole so big that the starlings move in first.

So the swallows circle the yard for a few days. Then they fly on.

The bluebird almost disappeared from Ontario once

In the middle of the last century, the eastern bluebird nearly vanished from Ontario. The old orchards and wooden fence posts it nested in were gone. The starlings and sparrows took the few holes that were left.

What brought it back was surprisingly simple. People started hanging birdhouses along their fence lines. Thousands of them, one yard at a time. The bluebirds found them, and slowly they came back.

The lesson is clear. A birdhouse with the right hole really does help. But it has to be the right one.

The faces the lumbermen left behind

The Ottawa Valley was once lumber country. Men worked the pine camps up the Bonnechere River all winter. And some of them did something odd. They carved faces into the stumps they left behind. Old hooded faces with long noses and beards. They called them wood spirits.

“My grandfather worked the camps up the Bonnechere. Every stump he left behind, he gave a face. Said it kept an eye on the place.”

Almost nobody carves them any more. Except for one man in an old drive shed outside Eganville, who has been doing it by hand for forty-four years.

The man who finds faces in a block of wood

Neil Tackaberry is seventy-two. He has carved more than 3,000 wood spirits. Every single one from one solid block of basswood. No glue, no joints, no two the same. Each one takes him about ten hours of carving.

His workshop is the old drive shed behind the farmhouse. A woodstove keeps it warm from six in the morning. There is one window, one lamp over the bench, and wood shavings everywhere on the floor. The whole shed smells of woodsmoke and fresh-cut wood.

He doesn’t draw the face first. He turns the block under the lamp and waits.

“I don’t decide the face. The grain tells me where the nose goes. I just take away what isn’t him.”

What comes out of the block is a birdhouse. The open mouth is the door. The heavy brow is the roof over it. And it is made to last longer than the man who carved it.

Why a wood spirit makes a better home than a hardware-store box

Ask Neil what makes a good birdhouse, and he won’t talk about how it looks. He’ll talk about what the bird needs. After forty-four years, he builds every one the same way:

• “The One-Block Build” — Each birdhouse is carved from one solid piece of basswood. There is no glued seam that can crack open in the frost and let the rain in.
• “The Bluebird Mouth” — The open mouth is about 4 cm wide. Bluebirds, tree swallows, chickadees and wrens fit through. Starlings don’t.
• “The Rain-Brow” — The carved hood sticks out over the mouth like the roof over a porch. Rain and melting snow run down the face and drip off the beard, not into the nest.
• “The Thick-Wall Shelter” — Solid wood walls keep the eggs warm on a frosty May night and cool on a hot July afternoon. A thin flat-pack box can’t do either. A small hole under the beard lets water drain out and fresh air in.

“People put up a box with a big hole in it and think they’ve done a good thing. All they’ve done is build a starling a house.”

Left outside without paint, the wood slowly turns a soft silver grey. After a few years it looks as if it grew on the tree.

The day the bluebirds came back to his fence

When Neil was a boy, every fence line in the Valley had bluebirds on it. Then, for about twenty years, he didn’t see a single one.

In 1998 he hung one of his carved faces on the cedar post at the end of the hayfield, just to see. The next May a pair of bluebirds filled the mouth with dry grass. They have nested on that fence line almost every spring since.

“That’s when I knew what I was really making. Not a face. A front door.”

The last two millimetres

Two winters ago, the eye doctor in Pembroke found macular degeneration in Neil’s right eye. That is the eye he carves with. He can still see the room. But the middle of what he looks at, right where the knife tip sits, has gone soft and grey.

“I can see the whole face fine from across the shed. It’s the last two millimetres. I set the tip at the corner of the eye and I can’t tell you if I’m on the line.”

His doctor told him plainly that it won’t come back. His hands are still strong. He can still rough out a block. But the fine work around the eyes, the part that makes the face look back at you, is over.

There are 59 finished birdhouses left on the drying shelf. When they are gone, there will be no more.

A maple syrup tin full of broken knives

He still goes out to the shed every morning. On the shelf above the bench sits an old maple syrup tin, the label long gone. It is full of broken knife tips. Every blade that snapped in forty-four years is in there.

“That’s not junk. That’s every face that gave me trouble.”

On a bad morning, he picks up the tin and shakes it once. That rattle is the closest thing he has to a record of his life’s work.

Why he is selling them for so little

The craft galleries in Ottawa would pay Neil $240 for one. Collectors buy his faces to hang indoors, over the fireplace, where no bird will ever use them. That is the one thing he can’t stand.

“A birdhouse that never holds a bird is just a dead face on a wall. I didn’t carve them for walls.”

So he priced his last 59 far below the gallery price, on purpose. He has only one wish, and he can’t make anyone keep it. He wants them outside. On a real fence post or a maple in a real yard. And next spring, he wants a bluebird or a tree swallow raising her young inside one of his carved faces.

The timing matters. A birdhouse that goes up this fall gets a winter outside to weather and lose its new smell. On cold nights, chickadees even use it to sleep in. By April, when the swallows come back, it is ready.

His granddaughter Haley, who teaches at Algonquin College in Pembroke, took photos of the shelf one Sunday and set up this page for him. Neil has never owned a computer.

“She keeps telling me people in Saskatoon want one. I told her, then they’d better not wait for the snow to melt.”

What people say about Neil’s birdhouses

• ★★★★★

  “It came heavier than I expected. You can feel it’s one solid piece of wood. I hung it on the maple in October, and by May a pair of tree swallows had moved in.”

  – Sharon D., 69, Kingston, Ontario
• ★★★★★

  “I’d bought three birdhouses at the hardware store and every one came apart after a winter. This is a different thing altogether. You can still see the knife marks.”

  – Bill F., 74, Guelph, Ontario
• ★★★★★

  “I gave one to my dad for his eightieth. He read the story and went quiet for a minute. It hangs by his kitchen window now, and he reports every bird to me on the phone.”

  – Tammy L., 52, Moncton, New Brunswick

Questions people ask before the last ones are gone

Where can I buy Neil’s birdhouses?

Only through this page. Neil has never sold to stores, and you won’t find his birdhouses on Amazon or Temu.

How long will they be available?

Only while the last batch lasts. Right now there are 59 birdhouses left on the shelf. When they are gone, there will be no more, because Neil can no longer carve the faces.

Can I try one without risk?

Yes. Shipping is free across Canada, and you have thirty days to send it back for a full refund. One email is all it takes.

• ★★★★★

  “The face has a calm, watchful look. The neighbours keep stopping at the fence to look at it. And the hole is small enough that the starlings leave it alone.”

  – Gary P., 71, Kelowna, British Columbia
• ★★★★★

  “Knowing it’s one of the last ones he will ever carve makes it more than a birdhouse. We had chickadees sleeping in it by December.”

  – Joanne M., 67, Peterborough, Ontario
• ★★★★★

  “It went up on the cedar post in two minutes. Three winters now, no cracks, and it has gone a lovely silver grey.”

  – Doug R., 76, Brandon, Manitoba

Where Neil hopes every one of them ends up