ORANGE : Birds Find Homes Built by Couple

With four kids, Cody and Teri Maresh already have a full house. But they are making room for at least two more families on their modest-sized lot in Orange.

Cody Maresh has almost finished building a log-cabin duplex with a rock chimney for the new occupants--probably sparrows, but they might be finches.

Although the couple have been building and decorating wooden birdhouses for about 10 years, the hobby has been especially gratifying, even therapeutic, for Cody Maresh since he suffered a major back injury working as a construction worker about two years ago.

“I’m disabled and am waiting for back surgery,” said the 40-year-old Maresh, who grew up in Orange. “I’ve just been doing woodwork to keep from going crazy.”

He has pieced together more than 100 houses since taking up the hobby with Teri, who puts the final touches on the creations. They say it takes anywhere from two to 40 hours to complete a new bird abode.

Wooden birdhouses adorn the trees of their back yard, and play host to more than a dozen bird families, including hummingbirds, finches, mockingbirds and doves.

“Being that Orange is an official bird sanctuary, they might as well have a place to live,” said Teri Maresh, who is also 40. Many of the bird shelters are modeled after older homes in Orange. Cody Maresh even built an elaborate replica of the house in which he grew up.

“I just like the appeal of old Orange,” Cody Maresh said, “the way it used to be. The times when people used to sit out on their front porch and just talk to each other.”

Materials for the houses have been fairly easy to obtain, the couple said.

“It’s done with scrap wood,” Cody Maresh said. “What most people tear out of their houses, we use. Most people’s trash is a treasure, really.”

In addition to the birdhouses, the couple also make what they call “yard art”--decorations for their front yard appropriate to upcoming holidays. Right now, the fence posts look like bunnies, but in a few more months new pieces will go up celebrating the Fourth of July.

Their favorite holiday is Halloween, when fences are transformed into ghosts and witches.

The works don’t go unnoticed. Passersby and neighbors regularly stop to admire the work, some even offering to buy the pieces. While the Mareshes may sell a few and have even traded a birdhouse to a neighbor for a wheelbarrow, most of the birdhouses end up as gifts.

“A lot of them I just give away,” Cody Maresh said. “People dig them, and I say, ‘Here.’

“I guess we’re just old hippies.”