How to build a birdhouse : from DIY in wood to commercial kits. Lots of advice for attracting birds to your garden and making a wooden house.
A wooden birdhouse is perfect for attracting birds to your terrace or garden to immortalize with a beautiful souvenir photo.
A birdhouse must not only be well made but also placed in the right position: avoid placing the DIY birdhouse in a passageway because clearly the birds do not like the “coming and going” of us humans.
Contents hide
1 How to build a birdhouse
2 What you need to make a wooden birdhouse
3 Birdhouses Ready to Buy
How to build a birdhouse
After seeing how to make a bird feeder , let’s move on to the wooden house ! For this DIY you must use untreated or painted wood.
The wood should be 2 cm thick to ensure protection from low temperatures. The trailing edge should be roughened by running a rasp over it: birds can take flight more easily from rough surfaces.
When designing the house you have two options:
- design a small, frontal, rounded opening and provide an opening on the other side to allow for inspection and occasional cleaning (remove old nests, chase away any intruding rodents, etc.)
- design a wider, rectangular front opening that also provides access for cleaning.
In the first case, the wooden house is “closed” and the entrance hole for the birds has a standard diameter of 2.8 cm. Avoid making larger holes because the birds most in need are passerines and other small birds .
If you have observed stiff necks near your home , you can prepare 4 cm diameter holes.
In the second case we have hypothesized an open birdhouse . Here, the front part is formed by a parapet of variable height depending on the birds you want to host. The parapet must be 8 cm high if you want to host passerines, wagtails, robins… a lower parapet, 2.5 cm, is useful if you want to attract birds such as the flycatcher. 16 cm for the very sweet redstart.
In both types of wooden birdhouses , you will need to make holes in the bottom to allow liquids to drain and the interior to ventilate. 4 holes are enough.
Inside the DIY wooden birdhouse , you won’t have to store any materials because the birds will provide the nest.
What you need to make a wooden birdhouse
In both examples of wooden birdhouses , you need to cut six pieces of wood. In particular, in the classic birdhouse, the one closed with the hole, you will need:
- Right wall
on the right side will measure 20 cm and on the left side 25. Height of 15 cm. - Left wall
on the left side will measure 20 cm and on the right side 25. Height of 15 cm - The front
should be a piece of wood 20 x 15 cm. Drill a hole with a diameter of 2.8 cm. - The bottom
should be a piece of wood measuring 15 x 11 cm. Drill 4 holes of 0.05 cm. - Back
is a 46cm x 15cm piece of wood. - Roof
is a piece of wood measuring 23 x 17 cm.
To mount the roof at the base (back) you will need a hinge that will allow you to open and close the roof. The wooden boards used must be 2 cm thick not only to allow thermal protection for the birds but also to give you a flexible thickness to be able to hammer in soft nails. Be careful when buying wood nails.
Attention!
The two walls, or the lateral pieces of wood, have sides of different sizes to allow you to create a sloping roof.
The ingredients to attract birds to your garden and maybe take beautiful photos, are three: water, food and shelter. That is to say that you need to add to your garden, a basin, a feeder and a wooden house! Maybe even a robin will arrive .
To take pictures of birds while they are eating, capturing the whole figure, a trick is to build the wooden house using a transparent material. If you want to understand how to proceed, you can read our article that explains step by step how to build a birdhouse in plexiglass .
Birdhouses ready to buy
If the final result of your work does not satisfy you, you can always “fall back” on Amazon where you can find several models.
