Bird cottages: DIY beautiful birdhouse ideas

Interesting facts, unusual birdhouses of the portal participants, drawings

A birdhouse is not just an excuse to make something with your own hands or decorate a tree with an art object on your site. It is also a help to feathered smaller brothers and a means of fighting harmful insects in the garden. Consider what birdhouses are, how to make a bird house with your own hands, and tell you what else you need to know for your birdhouse to be useful.

We remember the school curriculum, or what is a birdhouse

The birdhouse is an artificial nesting place for small and medium-sized birds, which in their natural environment create nests in hollows.

In Soviet times, schoolchildren annually made birdhouses in labor lessons and hung them on trees in order to help the birds with food and shelter in the spring after arriving from warm regions.

Despite the fact that the birdhouses are designed for starlings by name, sparrows, tits, wagtails, redstarts, woodpeckers, blackbirds, nuthatches and other birds also like to live in them; squirrels can also choose a bird house.

Among other things, birdhouses can bring great practical benefits to your garden and orchard. Birds are our best companions in the fight against harmful insects. Leaders among birds by the number of destroyed insects:

• starlings;
• tits;
• redstarts;
• wagtails;
• nuthatches.

Tits, for example, lay eggs 2 times per season, on average 10 pieces. Their chicks are gluttonous that parents bring food to their nest up to 400 times a day. Thus, during the period of childhood of chicks, about 10,000 insects (as well as their larvae), most of them harmful, are destroyed. That is, one pair of adult tits per season can peel up to 45 apple trees.

Even seemingly stupid sparrows are useful for the garden, in which the period of the first offspring coincides with the appearance of the larvae of the enemy of apple trees - the apple flower beetle.

In addition to birdhouses, they also make titmouses, wagtails, flycatchers and other bird houses. These modifications differ from each other in size, shape and tap hole.

For example, a titmouse has a smaller size than a birdhouse and a square bottom.

The wagtail has a flat porch in front of the entrance, as wagtails like to "walk".

Birdhouses from FORUMHOUSE participants

The theme of birdhouses is close to the participants of our Forum. What options of bird houses were not on the pages of our site.

For example, the option from the user Dmitriy_Dmade from a ready-made "Build it yourself" kit and decorated with our logo.

Classic birdhouse from the user legith:

This is the kind of beauty the user made with his son leon42 for the competition at the school:

I pampered our participant with such a birdhouse Olko her husband:

Bird cottage from Lisovina:

If the birds do not find a house specially provided for them, they can adapt other objects for a birdhouse, for example, a mailbox, like our participant Ju lences:

By the way, wooden birdhouses first appeared in Russia back in the 18-19 centuries. And in Europe, they were originally created from clay.

Simple do-it-yourself birdhouse

We offer you an option on how to make the most ordinary birdhouse with your own hands. You can safely involve children in the creation of such a simple product. Be sure to explain to them why you are doing this.

To make a home for birds, you will need a board, better than hardwood, with a thickness of 18-20 mm. Draw the details according to the dimensions shown in the picture:

Use a jigsaw, circular saw, or hand tool to cut the parts you want. Sand any sharp edges where the cuts are.

Now we start assembling the parts. You can fix them to each other with nails, screws or glue. The holes for the tap hole and the stick are more convenient to make before assembling the parts together. The size of the taphole depends on the type of future tenants.

So the entrance for starlings should be 4-5 cm, for tits or sparrows 3-3.5 cm, for redstart 3.5-4 cm.

Start collecting the product from the bottom. Attach the side panels to the bottom, then the front and rear, then install the roof.

If desired, the nesting box can be painted with wood oil. And if you want your house to be colorful and vibrant, use water-based paints without a pungent odor. Acrylic paints work well.

Please note that inside the birdhouse, the boards should not be planed so that the chicks can catch on the walls. Do not use varnish or varnish for external treatment. The glue can be used only odorless and does not emit toxic substances.

How to make a nest box

A nesting box is a type of birdhouse made from a piece of log.

The inside of the log is cleaned out, making it hollow. This can be done with a chisel. Or cut the log into 2 pieces, peel each half and glue or tie the halves back together.

The bottom and lid are made of a plank, giving it a round shape of the desired diameter. Or they can be made from the cuts of the same tree. If you make the lid a little larger in size, then you will get a protective visor above the entrance.

We advise you to treat the inside with a solution from parasites. Instead of a stick under the entrance, you can attach a chaga or a branch from a tree, then your nest box will look completely organic on the tree where you attach it.

Correct installation and care of the birdhouse

• The height at which the birdhouse hangs must be at least three meters. Make sure that the cat cannot get to the birdhouse and destroy it.
• It is best to attach the birdhouses to trees. The wagtail house can be placed under the roof of the shed, and for starlings - on a high pole.
• The letok should look to the southeast so that the first rays of the sun get inside. If you live in the southern regions, then hang the birdhouse to protect it from direct sunlight.
• The house for birds should be hung vertically or slightly inclined towards the entrance (especially if there is no protruding roof) to protect it from precipitation.
• The optimal time for installation is March. But be prepared that your house may be empty until autumn, as the birds will treat it with waryness, and in the fall, feeling the cold, they will decide to settle there.
• You cannot nail birdhouses to a live tree! Usually tied to the trunk on a wire or cord, or the birdhouse itself, or a stick nailed down. When hanging a birdhouse, especially at a great height, do not forget about safety precautions!
• At the end of the season, be sure to inspect the birdhouse for possible damage and clean the inside. Birds can fill the inside up to the entrance very quickly, and in this case, next season there will be no tenants for the dwelling.

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