Building BirdHouses
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Building Bird Houses by yourself or building bird houses with kids is a great activity for your family. By engaging your kids to building bird houses, you are letting them explore their creativity and stimulates their brains when they come up with unique birdhouses designs. You will be surprised at what some children can come up with ! Moreover, when you are building bird houses with kids, you will work towards a closer bond with your kids and your kids can learn something about nature too, which is a better lesson then any books they can read. If your intention is not to buy birdhouses but to build them, creating decorative birdhouses is also a fun activity !
When you are building bird houses with kids, you should take note of some of the materials you should buy before you start work on your birdhouses. Firstly, if you are making wooden birdhouses, make sure the type of wood that you purchase is healthy and suitable for the birds, this will mean that the wood should not have been treated with harmful chemicals which may be toxic to the nesting birds inside. In addition to that, you should also not choose wood that is painted especially on the interior part because the paint which sometimes contains lead may chip off and may be harmful to the birds when ingested especially in baby birds. Safe wood choices for wooden birdhouse will be pine, cedar and cypress. If you want to choose a bird house color, then use only non-toxic paint on the exterior of your wooden birdhouses. In this way, even ordinary wooden birdhouses can become fancy bird houses and unique bird houses. Be sure to also include a roof and hinges on one of the side for opening for easy maintenance.
Metal bird houses are not recommended because the edges on metal sheets can be very sharp and may cut the birds when they are going in and out of your birdhouses. Although a metal bird house may be forms of some very unique bird houses, the metal birdhouses because of its natural inherent metallic properties, traps heat inside your decorative birdhouses and turns it in an oven under an afternoon sun. Can you imagine being trapped in a metal box on a hot sunny afternoon ?
Next, you should include drainage holes in the bottom of your wooden birdhouses. Making small quarter inch holes at each four corners on the floor of your wooden birdhouses will let the trapped water out, helping to keep the birdhouse interior dry. You should have also some holes on the roof if your decorative birdhouses are of a boxed birdhouse designs to allow for ventilation to take place.
If yours is a wooden birdhouse, please ensure that there are no nails or sharp corners pointing out in your birdhouses because the bird may hit the nail or sharp corners and get injured. If you want to attract a certain species of birds to your bird house, you can go to your local library or check out the other articles in this blog for the bird house height placement.
Building cute birdhouses or a wooden birdhouse is both an easy and educational activity which can be enjoyed by you and your kids together. Creating something that is visually pleasing as well as providing a safe shelter for visiting birds is a very rewarding experience.
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Hi, All I wanted to look at is Birdhouse of the Day feature. Which I had seen in the Birds and Blooms April/May issue. I want to have the easy bluebird house plan. Please help me out.
Thanks