DIY birdhouse for birds: drawings and photos

Recommendation points

• What to make housing for birds
• What are the differences between nesting sites for different birds
• We make the walls and bottom
• Correct roof
• Place for the frying pan and its fastening

There are many reasons to attract birds to your site. All they need is to offer them a safe and secure home. We offer to help the feathered fellows and make several simple and solid birdhouses for your garden, which will not take much time to make..

What to make housing for birds

Most birds are very selective about their home. The most attractive in their eyes are houses that merge with the environment as much as possible. Therefore, no matter how you would like to decorate the birdhouse with woodcarving or make it varnished, it is better to abandon this idea – they will only nest in such housing by a fluke.

Surely, houses that look like a natural hollow in a tree trunk will be attractive for birds, so a hollow chock with a length of 300-350 mm is better for manufacturing. Its upper cut should be oblique for fixing a flat roof.

However, not everyone has equipment suitable for such processing, so we offer an imitation of such a birdhouse. As a minimum, naturally aged dark untreated wood should be used. Hardwood slabs are also good if the bark is not too thick. Choose a forest with a timber pillar width of about 130–150 mm. You will also need a small piece of a forty-piece board of the same width and four 20×20 mm bars 300 mm long.

No additional wood processing is required. On the contrary, varnishing and painting can cause olfactory rejection in birds, and too smooth walls will not allow claws to cling to them.

What are the differences between nesting sites for different birds

Before we start making a bird house, let’s decide: which birds should be attracted to your garden. Naturally, species that eat pests of fruit trees and vegetable crops will be useful first of all..

Starlings, for example, like high and not too spacious nests, in which the entrance is round and located as close to the roof as possible. The size of the entrance should not exceed 40-50 mm, there is no need to put any perches, but the roof should be extended forward at least by the width of the birdhouse, there should also be overhangs of 50-70 mm on the sides.

For swallows, it is better to make a house with a gable roof and a rectangular recess in the corner as an entrance. This design imitates the descent of the gable overhangs of the roof, where they like to settle so much, so the front wall can be made from a planed board. To protect against predators, such a birdhouse should have a wide overhang of the roof, more than 300 mm, and be longitudinally elongated in plan. Nests for owls are arranged in a similar way, but inside the birdhouse should be closer in shape to a cube with a side of 250-300 mm, and make the entrance under the roof a better square.

For small tits and flycatchers, the size of the entrance should be even smaller – 30–35 mm. These birds will like some semblance of support in front of the entrance, but instead of a perch, it is better to just nail a horizontal glazing bead.

Remember that by making the birdhouse stand out, and the entrance too wide, you run the risk of providing housing for sparrows that do not need it, but discourage others from nesting. It is also possible the dominance of rooks, which is not very good for berry and orchards.

We make the walls and bottom

Almost each of the houses is assembled according to the same scheme – in the form of a blank box. Only the size, diameter and position of the tap hole differ.

First, we mark and cut four pieces of length 300–350 mm from the slab. Choose as even wood as possible with a uniform cut width. We mark on the flat part of the blanks two longitudinal parallel lines at a distance of 130 mm from each other. If the croaker is 50 mm wider in both directions – it’s okay, the main thing is not to have already put.

On the inner side of the lines, we install two bars, aligning the ends along the upper edge. We fasten from the outside with 25 mm black self-tapping screws, having previously drilled a 5 mm hole in the slab. Place the attachment points no closer than 50 mm to the upper edge. When the bars are fixed, we cut off the excess wood and bark protruding along the edges with a knife. On the inner edge of the bar, we also make shallow (5 mm) notches with a knife every 10-15 mm, this will help the inhabitants of the house to climb to the taphole.

We apply the side walls along the marking lines, drill them and fasten them with self-tapping screws. Try to arrange the cuttings of the slab so that as much bark as possible and as little wood as possible protrudes at the corners. After assembly, cut off the protruding edges with a knife, giving the house a rounded shape, and check if the tips of the screws are not protruding inside.

It is better to make a notch in the front wall before assembly. This can be done with a wood crown or in the old fashioned way – with a jigsaw, after having drilled the inlet hole. The height of the notch above the bottom is very simple to choose: so that a cat or other predator cannot reach the nest above it with a paw.

In the lower part of the birdhouse, the bars do not reach the edges by 40–50 mm. A square cut of the board is inserted into the free space and fixed to the ends of the bars; the bottom does not require special adjustment. In general, the birdhouse does not need to be sealed, the birds do it themselves with enthusiasm. True, large cracks and holes can be covered with clay from the inside..

Correct roof

When the birdhouse case is assembled, lay it on its side and use a hacksaw to make an oblique cut at the top so that the lid board is tilted back. The slope is purely symbolic, in principle, you can even leave the lid flat, but the fit will give a denser vestibule.

For the roof of the birdhouse, we take the same slab, but 100 mm wider and almost 200 mm longer to obtain overhangs of the desired width from different sides. It is important that the woody part is solid, without large cracks and knot holes..

When attaching the birdhouse lid, it is necessary to provide for the possibility of its removal. To make it easier for the settlers, every year after harvesting from the trees, the nesting boxes should be cleaned, taking out the old nests. Therefore, it is advisable to mount the cover on awnings (as for vents), which are screwed to the rear wall from the outside.

Place for the frying pan and its fastening

A regular wooden plank or a 40 mm wide bar is screwed to the finished birdhouse at the back. Self-tapping screws need to be taken short so as not to pierce the wall through and through.

It is best to hang houses in places far from people and pets. These can be power transmission towers and telegraph poles, gables of buildings, trees and any structures that are difficult to reach and at a height of about 3.5–4 m. It is recommended to position the birdhouse in such a way that it spends at least 2/3 of daylight hours in the shade.

The attachment must be removable for cleaning or repair. The birdhouse can be screwed to the “lifeless” supports with 8-10 turns of thin wire. For trees, such an attachment can be detrimental, so it is better to use 3-4 rubber bands.

Check the slope of the birdhouse – it should not be piled back under any circumstances, otherwise it will be difficult for birds to get out of it. This is especially important when attaching to tree branches that have a natural slope. Do not forget that you must feed all the birds that you attract to the garden, so install summer feeders and do not pick fruit and berry plants cleanly when harvesting.