Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 24, 1990 TAG: 9005240508
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHILDRESS LENGTH: Long
They're all for the birds - Eastern bluebirds, mostly.
With a little help and a lot of encouragement from Barbara, his wife of 37 years, Aldridge has constructed each house with his skilled hands. He spent the winter months inside the red barn he converted into a workshop, surrounded by his planes and saws and sanders and the fragrant shavings of western cedar.
It's a labor of love for the 59-year-old heart attack victim.
"From the late '60s to the late '70s, the bluebird population declined by half," says Barbara Aldridge. "The whole secret of getting the bluebird population back up is to build nesting places for them."
So Bill Aldridge built the nesting places, following a diagram his wife found in one of her books about bird watching.
And he made sure the birdhouses were ready before the first of March, in time for the return of the migrating bluebirds. Sometimes the couple worked in the rain or after dark to get the job done.
They got the job done.
There's a three-mile stretch of country road on Virginia 693 and 787 between the little communities of Childress and Snowville where Bill Aldridge's birdhouses hang from crooked fence posts.
Behind the barbed and woven wire fences, cattle and sheep graze quietly together while petals from flowering dogwoods flutter above butter-colored wildflowers.
Bill Aldridge gets out of bed and takes off walking down this stretch of road each morning. It's something he's been doing since November 1988 when a heart attack put him in the hospital for 11 days.
"The doctors suggested that I start walking," he said. Other than an increased awareness of the importance of diet and exercise, Aldridge's heart attack hasn't changed his life all that much.
He still puffs slowly and thoughtfully on his ever-present pipe, he still goes to work at The Furniture Market - the Christiansburg business he and Barbara have owned and operated since 1962 - and he still appreciates every day of his life.
"Anybody who knows Bill knows he's always been a 100 percent optimistic person," Barbara said.
His optimism and his enthusiasm for life have been contagious. Though his neighbors were a bit wary when he first asked them if he could put up his birdhouses on their property - "I think at first they thought we were peddling bluebird houses," Barbara said - they soon got caught up in the spirit of things.
All it took was one look at a bluebird, Aldridge guesses.
"They're so pretty when they peep out of those birdhouses," he said.
"When the sun hits their wings while I'm walking in the morning, their color is brilliant . . . . The other day I came very close to a pair of bluebirds and I stopped and watched them for about five minutes," he added. "It does your heart good."
It's been fun, the Aldridges said. So much fun, in fact, they don't see an end in sight.
"We've had birdhouses up at home for about 10 years and enjoyed them. We want others to enjoy them, too," Aldridge said.
"We would like to get the birdhouses all the way out to route 8, adding 40 to 50 new houses each year," he said.
"If we live long enough, we'll have 'em in Floyd, Pulaski, all over Montgomery County!"
The Eastern bluebirds - about seven inches long with bright blue wings and dusty rose-colored breasts - are open-meadow birds. They avoid wooded areas. They are choosy tenants, too.
"Bluebirds don't like houses painted. Their natural habitat for years was old fence posts. The treated fence posts we have now don't have holes and cavities for them to build nests," Aldridge said.
"Most of the books we've read say not to place the houses higher than five feet and not closer than 100 yards of each other. That discourages sparrows and other birds from inhabiting the house."
"Bluebirds won't go in a house that has a nest in it. You have to clean it out every year. That's very important."
Apparently, the Aldridges know what they're talking about.
"They love these houses," Barbara said. "We have bluebirds . . . in 75 to 80 percent of these houses. If you get 30 to 35 percent occupancy, that's good. We're just overjoyed at the number that are home this year for the bluebirds on our trail."
Now the Aldridges' neighbors look out for the bluebirds, too.
A little girl stopped the couple as they drove home from church one Sunday afternoon to tell them she had seen a bluebird in a house.
"She was so excited," Aldridge said.
And Aldridge already has made a bird watcher out of his grandson, 3-year-old Brannon.
"Pa-Pa Bill, look at the birds!" Brannon says when he hops around the Aldridges' farm.
The Aldridges' four children are grown and have left their home in the country. Lee, 35, is an advertising designer in New York. Sam, a 30-year-old surgeon, lives in Boston, and Beth, 29, is a nurse at Boston Children's Hospital.
Only 32-year-old Bill Jr., assistant manager of the family business, lives nearby.
But the Aldridges aren't threatened by the "Empty Nest Syndrome."
They have the bluebirds.
by CNB