Keeping Your Bird House Safe from Predators
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If you have read our previous post here, you would have gotten a pretty good idea on how to build birdhouses and where to place bird houses in the garden.
We have also discussed different kind of decorative birdhouses ranging from simple wooden birdhouses and other fancy birdhouses like the see-through birdhouses.
So let’s say you’ve put up your birdhouses and some time later, birds start visiting your birdhouses. They come and they nest in them and bringing their wide spectrum of colors and songs to your normally quiet backyard. Life’s good. Then something start happening, you see cats and squirrels and other predator staring at your birdhouse. Your decorative birdhouse has become a feeding bowl for predators ! Yikes !
In our previous post, we stated that one of the factors that influence birds choosing certain birdhouses to nest in is the element of safety. What can then do to start building a squirrel proof bird house or prevent any predators from attacking our nesting birds in our decorative birdhouses ?
In the great system of ecology and biodiversity, every species of plants or animals will have another species that feed on it. This is how nature works. Certain species may be food for other species and in doing so, it controls the population and avoids overcrowding. For our species of birds that resides in our wooden birdhouses, the species of animals that preys on them will probably be squirrels, raccoons, cats, wasps and ants. But birds can fly away when they detect a predator coming, can’t they ? Yes, they can. But if the birds are already nesting in your wooden birdhouses, there could be bird eggs and young baby birds which cannot escape from the oncoming predators and usually get eaten up.
However, there are steps we can implement to prevent or minimize such occurances from happening in our birdhouses. In this series, we will take a look at some points on how to make our decorative birdhouses safer for visiting birds to nest in.
Birdhouse Entrance Opening Sizes
The birdhouse opening sizes plays an important, central role in keeping out predators from entering your decorative birdhouses. Whether you are building or buying a decorative birdhouse, besides the birdhouse designs aesthetic factors, you should also know what kind of birds you want to attract to your decorative birdhouses. The birdhouse opening size should only be big enough for the species of birds that you want to attract. Not too big and not too small.
This will require you to have some prior knowledge of the species of bird. You can usually find this information at your local library or you can ask your local pet store for more information about the species of bird you want to attract. For those you who buy birdhouses, and the birdhouse designs that you like have an entrance opening size that is too big and allows for other predators to enter the birdhouse, consider nailing an additional piece of wood at the entrance to minimize the birdhouse entrance opening size.
Birdhouse Perches
Some birdhouses have perches in front of the birdhouse entrance opening to beautify the decorative birdhouse and make it look like a real house.
Perches are not needed for birds to get in and out of the birdhouse. On the contrary, the perches are harmful the birds that are in the birdhouse because it allows the predator to use it to harm the birds inside or prey on the young baby birds and any bird eggs. If you have bought a birdhouse with a perch, you can try to remove the perch to enhance the safety of your birdhouse.
Mounting options for birdhouses
Instead of placing your birdhouses on branches of trees, you can place your wooden birdhouses on metal or PVC poles. These poles usually won’t be found in the local pet store but you can find them instead at your local hardware store. Measure how high you want to place your birdhouse before going to the local hardware store as some of them need to cut the poles to the desired length that you want. Besides mounting your birdhouses on these poles, you should also located them away from the trees and other potential places where the predator can climb on and jump to your birdhouse. To futher deter other animals from climbing the pole to reach your birdhouse, you may apply something slippery to the pole. Be careful not to choose a toxic substance to apply to the pole. This will keep out snakes and other non flying creatures like squirrels and raccoons from reach your birdhouse.
In the next blog post, we will be looking at more ways to increase the safety of your birdhouses.
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