Make a Bird House! (Part 1: Designing and Choosing Up-cycled Materials!)

Framing

It's time to design my bird house and to get my project started! At first, I thought it would be easy, just make a simple box with roof using the existing reclaimed wood I have. After all, my goal was to kill two birds with one stone (pun intended): To practice my wood working, and to make a nice bird house for my corridor garden. (also to get rid of some of the scrap wood I have around actually. so three birds...)

However, after taking a nap and dreaming about it, I decided that I should try to make a good one.
What makes a good birdhouse anyway?
So these questions came to mind:

• What makes a Bird house a Bird house?
• What features should it have?
• What should a bird house look like?
• Which Upcycled materials should I use?

and I started reading up on and researching on the following:

ReSearch on Bird Houses

What Makes a Bird house, a bird house?

Firstly, a bird house is also known as a nest box. See Wikipedia on Nest Box. 

It was invented by Charles Waterton in the early 19th century to encourage more birdlife and wildfowl on the nature reserve he set up on his estate. (Cool beans! I wish to follow in his footsteps!)

Basically, it is used as a means to attract, feed and nest birds and other small animals and insects!

What Features should a Birdhouse have?

The main features and considerations that go into the design of a bird house are:

• Materials used in the construction
• Safety for the bird: should be made from untreated wood or materials that do not leach chemicals. Preferably not fully metal as it will get too hot
• The Aesthetics and ekistics of it: You would want it to look good and not out of place amongst your physical surroundings.
• Physical Features 
• An overhanging, sloped roof, a recessed floor and drainage for protection from the sun and elements such as rain and strong winds 
• Ventilation holes for the animal to breathe
• a way to access the interior for monitoring and cleaning
• An Opening or Entrance Hole but no outside perches which could assist predators
• Deciding which birds you want to attract
• The Diameter of the opening:  e.g. some birds select boxes with a hole only just large enough for an adult bird to pass through.
• Size of the box: very small boxes attract wrens and treecreepers and very large ones may attract larger ones. (DUH!) 
• The materials you use:  e.g. Sparrows have been shown to prefer woodcrete boxes rather than wooden ones.
• Consider Other Nesting Animals
• Your bird box may end up attracting other animals such as bats, butterflies, wasps and even ants and termites!

Bird House Designs 

So next step was to look at some existing DIY birdhouse designs! For mood boards I usually turn to Pinterest! Do have a look at what I found here!

My Bird House Design

Features I want to have

The birdhouse is to be mainly made of reclaimed wood. I have much scrap wood lying around, that I kept thinking that I will save for other projects. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and I really should just use it before the wood deteriorates!

The animals I want to attract are: 

• Small Yellow Bird: I've to research what are the small birds that visit my estate! I used to see a small yellow bird visit before, but ever since they cut down the tree in my estate, it never came back! sob sob...
• Butterflies: There are many flowers in my corridor garden, perhaps the plants will be more healthy if I can attract some polinators like butterflies! Again they used to visit, but with the tree gone... (I'm actually very angry and sore they cut the tree down. I shall write a post about this tree one day...)

Inventorying the Materials that I have

These are the scrap woods I have. In order from left to right, they are: 

• 24.5 X 7 X 1.5
• 27.5 X 7.5 X 1.5
• 34 X 7.5 X 1.5
• 40 X 10 X 1.5
• 44 X 9 X 1.5 (2 pcs)
• 53.5 X 9 X 1.5 (2 pcs)
• 56 X 7 X 1.5 (3 pcs)

(in cm Length X Width X Thickness)

Designing my Birdhouse

<searched on yyyy_mm_dd>

Backstory: (more later!)

What happened?

A cow jumped over the moon. The dish ran away with the spoon.

What did I do?

Went to the market and screamed wee wee wee wee.

Resolution

The cows came home.

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