Free Bird House Plans!

It came as suddenly as daylight savings: an early morning birdsong riot that actually startled me from sleep. That was Sunday. I eased into it slowly at first, dreamy-eyed on a pillow; then barefoot outside with coffee. It fiddled throughout the afternoon, as chirping goes in the first weeks of spring, while the boys dug in the fresh earth. In the summer, birdsong wanes sharply with the hot rising sun. But in these first, cool glorious days of spring, all bets are off. It’s a carnival of tweets. So it seems we have to hustle this week to complete what we had earmarked as a winter project: building bird houses. Quite possibly, they are already using what we’ve left out to build their own nests in the trees, but the wood is ready in the garage and our hands are empty and poised for work. Wanna join us? My dad sent us some plans he drew up:

“Steph, I promised you some drawings on birdhouses built from used cedar fences. These were built with the 5/8″ x 5 1/2″ x 6′ rough pine Pickets. Don’t use the treated pine pickets, as the chemicals are bad for the baby birds. I’m not sure what the typical fence picket is there, so check. It doesn’t have to be cedar. All but the owl house with the round hole were built from reused fence pickets. Actually that owl house was built from those pickets - only I glued a half ripped picket to glue to a full picket to make the size I wanted.

These are all very simple to do. If you wanted a neighborhood project, you could pre-cut all the pieces and then have the kids assemble the structures - that’s what I did here for some bat houses and bird houses and feeders.

Use galvanized nails and deck screws to fasten the pieces. Seal the critical with silicone caulking. The deck screws make it nice to disassemble.”

Take care,
Pop



Upskirt view, ready for spring cleaning (this little house has seen several years–and hurricanes):

Dad can orchestrate a symphony with of a handful of kids, a bag of nails and some 2×4s. He won’t be here tomorrow to help us build, but we’ve got his blueprints and a good measure of his enthusiasm. Good stuff is hard to keep to yourself. On that note, show us as soon as you can what you’ve built for the birds!