How to make bird houses, different types of houses. DIY bird house

Attracting birds to the garden with houses

With the arrival of spring, all kinds of insects wake up in the garden, many of which are capable of causing great harm to fruit and berry plants. One of the effective and safe ways pest control - attract birds to the garden. Insects for them tasty treat, and they will be happy to hunt them without flying far from home. Our task is to build them a house with food nearby. Usually birds willingly inhabit man-made bird houses, if they are made with love and conscientiously. They are convenient for hiding from bad weather and predators, as well as laying eggs and feeding chicks.

Many people call bird houses birdhouses. Starlings have long been revered and loved in Rus', although there are opinions that they were also eaten. He was considered the harbinger of spring and, by hanging wooden nests in the garden, people thus attracted him to their lands. The name “birdhouse” has stuck and now few people know that bird houses can be intended for other birds, differing in design and size. So, for example, you can build titmouses, flycatchers, shakers, nest boxes and half-houses.

Besides starlings, great benefit Great tits bring it to the garden. They are insectivorous birds and eat as much pests as they weigh! When making a house for a tit, one feature needs to be taken into account. In nature, these birds prefer to settle in tree hollows, so they often refuse to populate the square birdhouses that people offer them. For these birds it is better to make titmouse octagonal or o round shape.

Before you start creating bird house, you need to decide what birds it is intended for. The size, height of the entrance and other structural features of the nest depend on this. Below we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the options for “birdhouses”.

— Common birdhouse . The height of the structure is 30-40 cm, the bottom dimensions are 15x16 cm. The diameter of the taphole is 5 cm. The distance from the taphole to the bottom is 24 cm. The hanging height is from 3 m.

— Titmouse (a smaller copy of a birdhouse). Height 25-30 cm, bottom dimensions 10x12-14 cm. Diameter of the entrance 3-3.5 cm, distance from the entrance to the bottom 18 cm. Hanging height 2-5 m. This house is perfect not only for great tits, but and for blue tits, sparrows, pied flycatchers, redstarts, whirligigs, nuthatches and pygmy owls.

— flycatcher . It differs from the titmouse with a height of 8-10 cm, but otherwise is a variation of it. Intended for colonization by pied flycatchers, gray flycatchers and redstarts.

— wagtail . This nesting site is built on the reverse principle. The height and width are 15 cm with a depth of 30 cm. Before entering the house, you need to make a small ledge, 10 cm wide. It is needed so that the birds can “land” on it before entering the home. Wagtails are “walking” birds, so they cannot cling to the edge of the entrance with their paws.

— Poluduplyanka . The size and shape of the structure resembles a titmouse with only one difference - a larger entrance. Its width should be equal to the width of the house itself, and its height should be 2 times less than the height of the house. This nesting option is intended for those species of birds that prefer to settle not in hollows, but in natural woody cavities.

— Duplyanka . In shape and texture it is as close as possible to a natural nest.

It is made from a fragment of a tree trunk, from which the core is removed, and a taphole is cut out in one of the walls. The structure is covered with boards, leaving the entrance area open for birds to access.

— If it is intended to attract common pikas or short-toed pikas, then the design should be triangular with two holes. In nature, the second exit saves the bird in the event of an attack on the nest by a predator. Nesting height 22-26 cm, width 14-20 cm, entrance width 3x6 cm.

Among the birds that inhabit nesting grounds built by humans, only starlings “take out the trash,” keeping the house clean. The owners will have to clean up after the rest of the birds. garden plot. Therefore, it is better to make the roof or one of the walls of the bird house openable, so that at the end of the warm season the remains of the old nest and debris can be removed.

Hang birdhouses and titmouses better in autumn so that the birds have time to get used to them and are not afraid of new objects in their familiar territory. But you can do this in the spring, if for some reason it was not possible to do this in the fall.

In the next article we will talk about how to build a birdhouse and titmouse with your own hands.

March is just around the corner. It’s high time to take care of nesting sites for the bird population in the area. What birds do we want to see in our garden?

The great tit and blue tit are real gardener's assistants, one of the most useful birds in forestry and park management. If you regularly fed the tits in winter, then in the spring they will not forget the way to your garden. But no matter how hospitable the feeder is, tits will not stay in the garden or park if there is no hollow or house suitable for building a nest.

Most often, people make nesting houses for starlings - birdhouses (sparrows also willingly populate them). Undoubtedly, the starling deserves to have a house built for him. One starling brood can eat about 1000 cockchafers and their larvae in 5 days, not counting a huge number of caterpillars and slugs. Observations by ornithologists say that the starling most often hunts not in the garden near the house, but in the nearest forest or field, while the tit works only in the area where its nest is located. So - choose. Maybe we should help the small birds first? Such as blue tit, garden redstart, pied flycatcher, white wagtail. These birds usually settle in hollows, and few people remember them in the spring, which is a pity. My opinion: we need to attract as many small birds as possible into gardens, parks, squares and shelterbelts, and leave villages and the outskirts of forest parks to starlings. It is best to hang one birdhouse for every five houses for small birds. This measure will keep the starling in our gardens and yards, but will reduce its numbers. There is another, very original, method of keeping the number of starlings within reasonable limits. The fact is that in a spacious standard house a pair of starlings raises three to six chicks, and in a cramped birdhouse with a bottom area of ​​12x12 centimeters (as in a natural hollow) - two or three.

The material for nesting houses can be any dry board with a thickness of at least 1.5 centimeters (2-2.5 centimeters is best), as well as planks, slabs, a whole log or a log with a hollow. Thin boards and plywood are unsuitable: they are short-lived and warp quickly. You can make a nest from a log, but it has no advantages compared to a house, and it is much more difficult to make.

WITH outside house, the boards can be planed, but with inside they cannot be processed: it is very difficult for chicks (and even adult birds) to get out on a smooth surface. If the boards turn out to be smooth, then before assembling the house on its front wall - from the inside, below the notch - you need to make horizontal notches with a chisel or knife. There is no need to make any thresholds outside under the entrance; the birds get along just fine without them. It’s good if there is a branch near the treehouse: tits and flycatchers like to sit on the sidelines and look around before flying into the nest. The taphole is drilled with a brace or gouged with a narrow chisel. If there is nothing to cut with round hole, let it be square. To do this, you need to saw off the upper corner of the front wall. The titmouse differs from the birdhouse primarily in the diameter of the entrance. To inspect the house before the birds arrive and clean it from the remains of last year’s nest, the roof is made removable, strengthened so that neither the wind nor the crow can knock it down. The simplest mounting option is to attach the lid to the house with wire; a more complex one is to use spikes provided in the design of the side walls and roof. More rational flat roof with a slight tilt back, the gable will begin to leak faster.

When assembling the house, first a plank is nailed to the back wall, with which the nest box is attached to a tree or pole. They nail it to the bottom side walls, then the front and finally the back with the bar. To fasten the walls to the bottom, it is better to use screws rather than nails. We must try to make the house firmly built, without cracks. If any have formed, they are caulked with tow or coated with clay.

Houses begin to be hung as early as February, as some sedentary and nomadic birds (sparrows, tits, nuthatches) look for nesting places very early. IN middle lane the European part of Russia is the most late date hanging - end of March. Houses for flycatchers can be hung until the end of April. Best time for hanging titmouses - autumn: by spring the nesting box will darken and become part of the tree.

The bird house should be modest and inconspicuous, hanging vertically or with a slight tilt forward. Birdhouses hung backwards, as a rule, are not occupied.

Least picky about appearance artificial nesting sites for sparrows and starlings. Other birds do not like to live in bright or freshly planed houses. They are painted before hanging. strong solution potassium permanganate or lightly coated with earth. The pied flycatcher often ignores a house that has darkened over the years. But if you whiten it inside with chalk, the situation will change. The great tit, on the contrary, prefers twilight in the nest. Birdhouses can be painted on the outside with oil paint.

In noisy, crowded places - parks, squares - nesting places for birds should be placed higher: birdhouses - 5-6, titmouse - 4 meters from the ground. In a calm garden environment, the titmouse can hang at a height of 2 meters.

Unlike the starling, the great tit is very picky in choosing its nesting site. It is better to make a house for her from thick boards and also without cracks. It is advisable to cover the titmouse in the crown of a tree, but the branches should not cover the entrance. Neither tits, nor flycatchers, nor redstarts like open, windy, sunny places. The wagtail is distinguished by the fact that it does not know how to cling to vertical surfaces with its paws - therefore it never settles in birdhouses. But if you make a special house and hang it under the eaves of an uninhabited wooden structure, a pair of wagtails will happily build a nest there.

Eat different ways attaching nest boxes to trees. The simplest option is this. From the outside, a 6-7 cm nail is driven into the side walls of the house exactly in the middle of the cut of the back wall, retreating from above by 1/3 of the entire length of the wall. The nail is driven from the bottom up. The end of a hemp rope or soft wire(aluminum should be insulated), throw it over the roof, slightly pull it and bring it under the second nail. Then they wrap a rope around a trunk or thick branch of a tree and secure the end to a nail. Old electrical cords are good for this type of fastening.

To hang the house, you need a light 4-meter ladder. It's better to work with two or three people. You can make a loop at the ends of the rope in advance and put them on nails when hanging. The rope on the tree is placed obliquely to the trunk shaft, and not across it.

Where should the entrance to the house look? In a park where winds and rain are restrained by trees, it is not necessary to strictly observe the direction of the entrance. Before hanging the nesting box on open place, you need to establish exactly which direction in your area in the summer rains and winds most often come from.

A properly made house can serve birds for several years.

Bird houses
( Dimensions are in centimeters)

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DIY bird houses in the garden, unusual do-it-yourself bird houses.

Waking up with the first rays of the sun to the loud, cheerful chirping of birds outside the window is one of the most magnificent delights country life! It is our pleasant duty to take care of the feathered inhabitants of our garden. For some, some birds are garden thieves, I don’t know... I don’t mind a few strawberries or currant branches for the birds... Personally, for me, birds are a wonderful pleasure for the soul, eyes and ears. What would we do without them?! Feeders and bird houses are the smallest, but very important thing that you and I can do for our little neighbors in our country house, property and garden. For example, on our site there is always a bird cafe full of guests)) and several birdhouses, and also, my daughter’s tree house has recently been occupied by a wood pigeon, it just so happened that he came to us along the path (problems with the wings) and stayed... You won’t leave!
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Everyone is happy about the long-awaited spring: people, birds, and animals. When nature awakens, animals come out hibernation, and birds return home from warmer climes. It’s not for nothing that at this time many people are in a hurry to hang out small wooden houses, which are happily inhabited by starlings and swifts, tits and wagtails, swallows and flycatchers. Because the birds in early spring there is not enough food and places to hide. Before you make a birdhouse with your own hands, you need to learn some of the subtleties of this simple work. And then the birds will feel safe in a cozy house.

Video about building a bird house

Types of bird houses

Although a bird house is usually called a birdhouse, it can be built not only for starlings, but also for other species of birds. In each individual case, the size and location of the birdhouse should be selected according to the features different birds.

For example, it is convenient for titmice when the height of the house is 25-30 cm, the bottom is 10-12 cm, and the diameter of the entrance is 30-35 mm. For wagtails, it is necessary to make housing that is not quite the usual design in our understanding. This bird does not have sufficient tenacity in its paws, so it needs a small ladder before entering the house. Such a birdhouse is placed under the roof of a building at a height of three to five meters.

The pika feels comfortable in a house where there are two through holes - on the right and on the left. Otherwise, this is a traditional birdhouse. Additional entrances help the bird hide if its home is attacked by predators.

By the way, there is an option to make a birdhouse from available material, namely, a piece of tree trunk. This type of house is called a hollow house.

Materials and tools for making a birdhouse

A standard house is made in a rectangular shape. Birdhouse dimensions:

• length 15 cm;
• height from 35 to 40 cm;
• width 15 cm.

The diameter of the entrance can be from 3.7 to 4 cm. To make a shelter for birds, you should arm yourself with the following tools:

• a simple pencil and a square;
• hacksaw with medium tooth;
• wood drill, diameter 50 mm;
• wood drill, diameter 4 mm;
• Phillips screwdriver (screwdriver, drill with Phillips bit);
• hammer.

Materials you will need:

• boards (about 1 m long, 20 cm wide, 2-2.5 mm thick);
• screws or nails;
• wire to hang the house.

Important!
When making a birdhouse with your own hands, keep in mind that the front wall from the inside should be rough. If it is smooth, make notches. This makes it easier for the bird to get out into the street, clinging to the board with its paws.

If there is no tree next to the house, then a shelf is nailed to it from the outside. Sitting on it, the birds rest, filling the surroundings with melodious singing.

Birdhouse manufacturing process

First, prepare the details of the house, walls, bottom, roof, perch, according to the birdhouse drawings. We must remember that the roof is made 8-10 cm longer than the bottom to create a canopy.

All parts are securely connected to each other

You can make a structure by tracing the elements directly on the boards. Using a square and a simple pencil, the dimensions are marked on the materials. The final result should look like this:

• three boards measuring 30 by 20 cm (front, back wall, top cover);
• two boards as side walls (width 15 cm);
• one board for the bottom (width and length 15 cm).

Having cut out the parts, you need to sign each one with a pencil so as not to confuse them later. Next, in the process of making a birdhouse, a tap hole is drilled on the front wall. It is made round in shape so that the bird does not get hurt when climbing into the house. Typically the hole is located at a height of 5 cm from the top edge. Otherwise, there is a chance that the cat will destroy the nest with the chicks by sticking its paw through the entrance.

Having attached the perch to the walls, the parts are connected to each other. First, the side parts are attached to the back. Then nail the bottom and insert the front wall. After this, the birdhouse is installed on the frame, and the process is completed by attaching the roof.

Birdhouse installation

When the structure is ready, you can begin installing it. Typically, birdhouses are placed at a height of at least three meters. For this a wall will do, pole or tree. The house is hung with a slight slope forward. Then the rain will not get into it, and it will be easier for the birds to get out.

In principle, birdhouses can be installed at any time of the year. But birds need them most in early spring - from late March to early April. It is during this period that they return home, and it is wonderful if they are met cozy houses.

The buildings are positioned so that the entrance is directed towards the south, southeast or east. Otherwise, cold wind will blow inside. It is important not only to know how to build a birdhouse, but also how to hang it correctly. For example, a house should not be attached to a tree with nails. For this it is better to use wire. Between the structure and the trunk (or wall) pads, 4-5 cm thick, are left. They are needed so that moisture does not accumulate and the back wall does not rot.

Help for birds - help for gardeners

Knowing how to make a birdhouse correctly, you can not only help the birds, but also protect the crop from pests. One brood of starlings can destroy approximately a thousand cockchafers and their larvae in just five days! According to rough estimates, a bird can eat as many pests in a day as it weighs. Instead of abusing pesticides, it is better to establish friendship with birds.

Plus, the proximity will help you get a closer look at the curious creatures. By the way, some of them are listed in the Red Book. If you approach the matter creatively, then a photo of a birdhouse can become an object to imitate. The main thing is not to forget that the house is intended primarily for birds. This means they should feel cozy and comfortable in it.

In 2015, the Russian Bird Conservation Union chose the redstart as “Bird of the Year”. In nature, redstarts use for nesting hollows hollowed out by woodpeckers, various natural holes in trees, for example, where a rotten twig has fallen out. They can also nest in recesses in human buildings. Like other cavity nesters, redstarts often lack convenient places for the nest. Redstarts can settle in both birdhouses and titmice - houses with a small round entrance, where great tits and pied flycatchers usually live. But special houses with a wide entrance (entrance hole) are more suitable for redstarts. In addition to the common redstart, gray flycatchers and tree sparrows can live in such a house. Redstarts can settle in a house hung in an old park or garden. In nature favorite places their habitats are pine forests; A “redstart” not far from the edge of an old pine forest is a real gift for the bird.
Like other small hollow-nesting birds, redstarts feed their chicks with caterpillars, collecting several hundred of them per day. So, together with one or two pairs of nesting birds, they will provide the garden with good protection from pests. In winter, the redstart, like the titmouse, can serve as a place for tits to spend the night.

It is better to hang redstart houses at the end of winter or early spring. Then the redstarts, arriving from wintering grounds in mid-April, will have time to find it before nesting begins. But you can hang it later - then, perhaps, it will be occupied by birds nesting for the second time (this happens). There is no need to hang it too high - a height of 3-4 meters is enough, and 1.5 meters where people will not disturb the birds. If possible, the entrance to the house should face south or east so that the sun hits it in the morning. There is no need to hang artificial nesting boxes too close to each other; it is better to maintain a distance between them of at least 20 meters. Each pair of birds protects its territory, and even if there are several houses on one tree, the birds will live in only one.

Chicks hatched in an artificial house on next year will try to return to their place of birth. Small birds themselves do not know how to clean their houses, therefore, in order for artificial nesting boxes to serve for many years, old nests from them must be shaken out in the fall or winter. For this purpose, the houses are equipped with a removable lid. If the house is not cleaned, birds can use it for 2-3 years; if cleaned - 5-7 years or more (until it rots and falls apart).

How to assemble a house for a redstart

Connect the side walls (BS) to the bottom (D) with self-tapping screws, attach the back wall (WS) and the front wall (PS) to them, smooth side outward, and rough inward. A rough wall is needed so that the grown chicks can get out of the nest. Place the lid on top. At first, the lid is put on loosely. To prevent it from falling, you can secure it with one screw. On the street, the lid will swell from moisture and, if it is kept tightly dry, it will be difficult to remove it later.