"Tommy's a very lovable guy," says Keane, who long ago stopped calculating Burke's tab for the flags, though he insists it's nothing like Norm Peterson's on Cheers.
Those four or five birdhouses out front are a win-win. They draw customers, which is good for Keane, and when they sell, it's good for Burke, who 10 years ago got out of the family home-building business and started building other things.
First, primitive furniture. Then, birdhouses costing thousands of dollars.
Most people blanch at that, till they see these remarkably accurate bird-versions of homes and historic buildings. They have real clapboard siding and stucco, cedar-shake shingles, copper flashing, and features like ladders, Dutch doors, and diverted rain spouts, if that's what the real houses have.
Lately, Burke has been on an Andrew Wyeth jag, creating birdhouses like the houses in Wyeth's paintings, works like Brinton's Mill, Christina's World, Marsh Hawk and Night Sleeper.
Burke uses the word lonely to describe these stark old Brandywine Valley homes. And truth be told, part of you is glad to think that, come spring, noisy birds might move in and start a family in these solid, sober structures.
Martins, the largest of the swallows, are among the few potential tenants. Unlike most birds, they like communal living, and birders love them for it.
"I just knew about martins," says Burke, 55, who scavenges and Dumpster-dives for materials and draws on his home-building history for craftsmanship.
His bird condos are serious business. One sold for almost $9,000, and some are of a stature more worthy of Moby Dick, another of Burke's great passions, than of tiny purple martins.
"I could lie down in some of them," he says.
Like so many paths taken, this one began with a girlfriend. Betsy wanted Burke to make a birdhouse for her mother in Maryland, so on a whim he made it like her house.
