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!
and follow the adventure:
Those really cool bidhouses and they look very easy build
This is a great article and cool site! As a father of 2 - 4 y/o girls, I am looking forward to enjoying this site more! These are great plans. I am going to try them with my daughters.
Here are some more ,a href=”http://www.greatbirdhouseplans.com/”>bird house plans!
Just wanted to add that your fun and interesting directions for multiple bird house designs make creating with your hands more enjoyable. Thanks for the great content and for sharing the photos and drawings. Also - the links to Flickr are helpful too.
Nice site and plans.
To the site owner or others who might have built the owl house from these plans:
I cannot determine the dimensions of the front of the Owl house. Am I missing something? Also it looks like it indicates the back is 32 inches long while the sides are only 14 inches tall. Even seeing that the back protrudes below the sides to allow for securing to the tree it still seems way out of proportion. Am I reading it correctly?
Thanks!
Jim
I think the bottom of the first plan should be 9.5 inches long,just like the sides? And the width of the bottom is 4.5 right?
In anycase cut out all the parts last night and me and my daughter are putting it together tonite with the air nailer. She is super anxious to paint it nice and pink
Going to build 3 all together
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