Thursday, May 26, 2011

Building Birdhouses

When my wife and I created our community garden we installed birdfeeders (sunflower and thistle) and birdhouses to support the birds that nest in our area.     I built the bird houses from a single length of 1x6 cedar from Home Depot using these simple plans.  Just 5 cuts with a Japanese handsaw, a few finishing nails and they were ready for mounting.   Birds moved in within hours.

Here's a photo of a cedar bluebird birdhouse, ready to be installed.

Here's another great site with house blueprints for several bird species.

My next project is a tree-mounted house for

Black-capped Chickadees
Carolina Chickadees
Mountain Chickadees
Chestnut-backed Chickadees
Boreal Chickadees
Siberian Chickadees
House Wrens
Carolina Wrens
Bewick's Wrens
Winter Wrens
Prothonotary Warblers
Tree Swallows
Violet-green Swallows
Tufted Titmouse
Plain Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Brown-headed Nuthatch
Pygmy Nuthatch
Brown Creeper

 I highly recommend building cedar birdhouses with hand tools.  It's great therapy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I stumbled on your blog...how do you find time for it all?!?! CIO and Dr and everything in between to include time to build bird houses.

Just amazing...do you ever feel like one of the juggled balls is about to fall?!?

Jessica said...

Thanks for sharing with us, you are definitely talented. I have been looking for blue bird houses for sale, but after reading your blog you have inspired me to look up the blueprints and make one myself. Thanks.