From bowling to birdhouses, this Canfield man found his passion

CANFIELD

A flock of chirping sparrows fly in unison into their Shields Road home.

The chimney-topped, multi-hole birdhouse stands steady on a pole as sparrow after sparrow enters.

“They are constantly in and out,” said Bo Kana, a birdhouse builder and seller.

The 80-year-old started building houses for the birds about 25 years ago, yet he’s still amazed by the birds and keeps building.

On this muggy Wednesday morning, Kana sits on his porch swing and listens to the constant chirps coming from a dozen or so birdhouses on his porch, in his trees and elsewhere.

“It keeps me calm,” Kana said.

Kana started building houses while he was still working at the General Motors Lordstown Plant in the early 1990s. After he retired in 1994, his birdhouse-building hobby grew.

“I used to be a bowler, but I got tired of smelling the smoke so I went to building the birdhouses,” Kana said.

He picked up a “how to” book on building birdhouses, and that got him started.

Read more about his craft in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.