In 2006 four Orange County bluebirders got together to discuss forming a group of bluebird enthusiasts. Two of them had been building and monitoring bluebird nestboxes for years or even decades. Dick Purvis, for example, began hanging and monitoring bluebird nestboxes when he was a child in Georgia and hung his first nestbox in1984 in O’Neill Regional Park in Orange County. Sully Reallon had hung nestboxes in Fawnskin in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Dick Purvis’ First Nestbox, 1984
Mike Spohn contacted Sully Reallon in November 2006 after reading an article in the San Clemente Sun Post and suggested they form a club. They formed the San Clemente Bluebird Club in 2006. Sully called Dick Purvis to discuss creating a county-wide club. Dick Purvis brought monitor, Bob Franz to the initial meeting with Sully and Mike at the It’s a Grind coffee shop in Laguna Hills. Dick argued that the club should be broader than San Clemente or South County, so, using the same SCBC initials they decided unanimously to call the newly formed club the Southern California Bluebird Club. In subsequent organizing meetings Linda Violett and Susan Bulger attended.
Dick Purvis and Sully Reallon, two founders of SCBC
The new club was formed and Mike Spohn created the website and the first newsletter ( seen by clicking the link below). Affiliations were made with the California Bluebird Recovery Program and the North American Bluebird Society. Nestbox data were entered in the CBRP database. The club began monthly meetings, built nestboxes and lifter baskets and began to grow to over 200 monitors and 380 members who monitored 2000 nestboxes and produced 7,777 Western Bluebird fledglings in 2011.
Click here for the SCBC First Newsletter
Finally, one for the Ol’ Western Blue Geezers.