The bluebird boxes are created by A Bird’s Best Friend, an eight-year-old, one-man operation created, managed and staffed by recent high school graduate William Frazier, the 18-year-old son of Brad and Kay Frazier.
In a ground-level workshop with Lake Norman frontage in his family’s sprawling home on Western Reach Road in The Peninsula, Frazier takes basic lumber and — using a standard pattern, a few tools and an experienced technique — fashions birdhouses designed specifically for bluebirds.
The opening in front, the shape of the box and even the tiny air vents drilled along the roofline are all designed to attract and provide comfortable nesting for eastern bluebirds. An easy-opening base to make it easier to clean out old nests and prepare for new tenants is included.
And to simplify matters even more, each bluebird box comes with a basic information sheet outlining nesting and eating habits as well as advice on finding the best location for mounting the box — a personal marketing touch from the quick-learning son of a wise salesman.
The complete A Bird’s Best Friend package, priced at $20, is the result of a project that began years ago when Frazier voiced his desire to get a Game Boy hand-held video game.
Frazier, then 10, was advised by his dad to come up with a way to generate some income to help pay for the device. Construction on the birdhouses resulted and, when little William began making house calls in the neighborhood pulling a wagon full of freshly made birdhouses, an entrepreneurial adolescence and a hands-on object lesson in self-reliance had begun.
Years later, when Frazier and his wish list matured, a car was the ultimate goal. When the target number of $3,000 in birdhouse sales was obtained, Frazier earned his second corporate bonus.
“Dad has always said sell your ideas and sell yourself,” Frazier says. “The plan for the bluebird houses just came up and I’ve stayed at it.”
He estimates that he’s sold at least 350 of the birdhouses, and Frazier-made models are scattered throughout The Peninsula and at many other locations in the region as a result of word of-mouth sales to parents of classmates at his school, Charlotte Country Day.
Each of his creations carries a personal tribute of sorts — an antique-looking “F” indention on the side made with a metal punch traced back to his family’s roots in Fraziers Bottom, W.Va.
“I just like that touch,” Frazier says, holding the dark, weathered device. “This tool belonged to my great, great grandfather and I like the idea that each birdhouse has that mark.”
But while attention to detail is definitely part of Frazier’s business practice, birdhouses are far from his only pastime. In the spring, bluebirds take a backseat to baseball, where Frazier was a standout on his school’s team. The left-hander compiled a varsity pitching record of 23-8 during his years at Country Day and will enter Western Carolina University in Cullowhee this fall on abaseball scholarship.
He’s already begun researching bluebird tendencies and preferences in cooler, mountain climates.
House hunting?
To obtain a hand-built, A Bird’s Best Friend birdhouse of your own, give William Frazier a callat 704-654-0811.
