Greetings Friend: Does anyone know were Ican obtain a book or blueprints for making birdhouses for birds from North America.
Quote from Mother Teresa: To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.
Shalom: Ed Fisher
Ed, try this.
Ed Fisher wrote:
Ed, here's a link to books available at Amazon.
-- Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. -- Margaret Lee Runbeck
I have made some fantastic looking bird houses which the birds flock to every time. I just plant a tree and put out a sign encouraging the birds to be owner builders, and they do bloody marvellous houses they build too.
Someone at rec.birds may have a good lead.
Make it the right size, put the hole in the right place, set it in the right place, don't leave any leaks, leave yourself a way to clean it out after the season is over, and you won't get many complaints! I think the rest is vanity.
There is a person over at Lumberjocks.com forum that builds bird houses that are quite identical to your own house. She works from a picture. I thought it would be more fun to put out one that looks like my neighbor's house!
Bill
Charlie Self, who posts to this group, has written a couple of books on the subject. See:
Dr. Deb wrote the following:
I built a couple using the plans on that site.
I built a wren house and screwed it to a tree where it could be reached by a ladder. It got occupied the first spring I put it up and I was rewarded with a family of wrens. In the fall I unscrewed the face of the house and removed all the twigs and debris. Then I screwed the face back on. I placed all the twigs on a permanently mounted small round table top that was screwed to a 30" high tree stump next to the tree with the birdhouse. The next spring, a new (or the same) couple moved into the birdhouse and they gathered up and used all the twigs that I had placed on the table top. Even birds recycle. :-)
While making a plumb and square and technically accurate birdhouse does have its advantages, I prefer the rustic, as it matches out general motif. These can be made of all sorts of scraps, bark, garage sale junk, PVC, tree limbs, and a lot of creativity comes in. And, they are usually free or very low cost. Birds and Blooms magazine has a section each month that highlights birdhouses, some of them very odd and creative.
I, personally, am going to make an owl box this winter, and see if I can get a resident mouser to move in.
Steve
Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend.
I've built a few and hung them about. And my neighbor has some thirty- year old houses hung hither and yoin that have seen dcent occupancy rates. But my plan-built units remain vacant as the plastic can in the garage, the kids' pink toy plan water'er hanging near the garden shed and the aluminum awning over the bard man dor have all hosted nests and produced offspring!
Go figure!
That reminds me of a story I like. My dad was sometimes quick-witted and he'd try to save a buck if he could too. I asked him why he didn't buy the shelled sun flower seeds (which cost about 4x as much) instead of the ones with shells. Without missing a beat, he said "You have to leave something for the birds to do...". Apparently he'd thought it over. : )
Bill
Bluebirds seem to prefer a house on a post in an open area rather than on a tree or side of a building, however if nothing else is available they will sometime use them.
If you have squirrels, they will gnaw the opening to try and get in. Two ways to discourage them that I have used is (1)-use your stapler and put a lot of them around the opening. Or (2)-cut a 3 inch square of copper with a hole the same size as the opening and tack it over the opening.
What happens if you soak the opening in pepper oil?
I used 1 inch (or larger) inside diameter galvanize. steel washers. Drilled
4 holes into the washer to accommodate galv. nails and fastened the washer on the opening. Nails circle drilling diameter had to be determined as per the available washers and the existing bird house hole.I've put out a metal hanging basket full of Moss. If it isn't taken over by medium birds, the small ones will steal the moss. We get a lot of small wrens and skeeter hunters in our hanging baskets on the porch. Drives the dog crazy, but then they like the skeeters in the lights as well.
Mart>> Does anyone know were Ican obtain a book or blueprints for making
Good idea. Washers! - birds want generally the same size and have a standard size for each bird. Keeps larger birds out.
Mart>> @comsouth.net says...
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