Outdoor Bird Houses--What Birds They Can Attract into Your Yard

Outdoor Bird Houses--What Birds They Can Attract into Your Yard
by Mary Fesio

The American Robin is the largest thrush.  Robins prefer to build their nest in the crotch of a tree.  You can offer a nesting platform if you don’t have an appropriate tree.  You should pick a spot that is, at least, six feet above the ground on a shaded tree trunk or under the overhang of a shed or porch.  A created mud puddle in the vicinity, also, offers additional enticement, as robins use mud to hold their nests together.

 Bluebirds can be attracted by putting up a bluebird house near an old field,  golf course, park or orchard.   The most consideration must be given to the hole diameter.  A hole that is an inch and a half in diameter is small enough to deter starlings, which along with house sparrows, are known to kill bluebirds while sitting on the nest.  Other animals are problematic to bluebirds, also.  Cats, snakes, chipmunks and raccoons can be discouraged from bluebird nests by mounting the bluebird home on a metal pole or by using a metal predator guard on a wood post.

 Purple Martins are a welcomed bird in many a yard because they are known to eat nearly 2,000 mosquitoes a day.  While it is true purple martins eat flying insects, don’t expect them to eliminate all the mosquitoes in your yard.  The martins prefer dragonflies which prey on the larvae of mosquitoes.  If you want to rid your yard of mosquitoes, you would have better luck if you put up a bat roosting box.  One bat can eat thousands of mosquitoes in one night.

 Martins, however, are entertaining birds.  You will enjoy watching their antics in your yard.  The best way of attracting martins is if you put a house on the edge of a river or pond, surrounded by a lawn or field.  A nearby telephone wire gives them a place to congregate, as martins are sociable birds.  

 Purple martins, being sociable birds, nest in groups, also.  Therefore, you will need a house with a minimum of four large rooms, six or more inches on all sides, with a 2 ½ inch entrance hole about 1 ½ inches above the floor.  Drainage and ventilation are major factors in the design of a martin house.  Porches with porch dividers, railings and supplemental roof perches like a TV antenna make any house more appealing.

 Houses can, also, be constructed from gourds by fashioning an entrance hole and small holes at the bottom to permit drainage.  If you make homes from gourds, it is not necessary to add railings and perches because adult martins will perch on the wire used to hang the house.  Before you choose a house, you must think about what kind of pole you are going to put it on.  Martins like their houses to be ten to twenty feet off the ground.  Some poles are less cumbersome than others.

 Wrens are not very choosy about their nesting place.  Nest boxes with a 1 inch X 2 inch horizontal slot are enticing to the wrens.  The Carolina wren requires a slot a little larger, 1 ½ in X 2 ½ inches.  However, the large the opening, the better the chances that house sparrows will occupy the box.  Wrens are known to fill the nest cavity with twigs, regardless of the fact they use the home to raise their young or not.  Since male wrens build several houses so that the female can have her choice of a home, you should hang several nest boxes at eye level on tree limbs that are partly sunlit.  Wrens are sociable.  Consequently, they will not shy away from a nest close to your house.

 Brown creepers and Prothonotary warblers like nesting behind the curved bark of tree trunks.  Slab bark houses appeal to creepers in heavily wooded yards.  Prothonotary warblers, also, prefer slab bark houses or bluebird boxes attached to a tree trunk.  But their houses must be place over water such as a like, swamp or river with a good canopy of trees overhead.

 Chickadees, Nuthatches and Titmice share the same habitat—feeders and food.  If you put a properly designed nest box in a wooded yard, at least one of these species is bound to check it out.  Chickadee houses should be placed at eye level.  They can be secured to tree trunks or hung from tree limbs.  The entrance h ole should be 1 1/8 inches in order to attract chickadees and exclude house sparrows.  Nuthatch houses should be anchored five to six feet off the ground.

 Barn Swallows and Phoebes are easy to attract if you have the right habitat like an old shed or open barn.  Their nesting behavior, not their song or plumage, which at will catch your attention.  But they tend to nest where you rather not have them — on a ledge directly over your front door.  You can offer them a nesting shelf near the front door to prevent a mess right at the door.

 Violet green and Tree Swallows prefer nest boxes attached to dead trees.  You should place the boxes about seven feet apart for these birds with white bellies and iridescent blue-green backs and wings.  These insect-eating birds like to be on the edge of a large field that has a river or lake nearby.

 Violet-green swallows, generally, nest in the forested mountains of the West.  Boxes placed on large trees in a semi-open woodland will tend to attract them. Woodpeckers of all types can be attracted with a suet feeder.  But, only, the flicker is likely to use a bird house.  They prefer a box with a roughened interior and a floor covered with two inches of layered wood chips or sawdust.  Flickers are, especially, fond of nest boxes filled with sawdust because they pile it up to suit themselves.  The box should be placed high up on a tree trunk, exposed to direct sunlight for best results.

 Flycatchers—the great crested and its western cousin, the ash-throated flycatcher, are commonly, found in rural areas that have wooded lots and in wooded suburbs.  They use abandoned woodpecker holes for nesting sites.  Flycatchers tend to nest in a bird house if it is placed ten feet high in a tree in an orchard or at the edge of a field with a stream.  

 Owls very rarely build their own nests.  Great-horned and long-eared owls like abandoned crow and hawk nests.   Most other species nest in tree cavities and bird houses.  Barn owls like selecting nesting sites near farms.  These birds will nest in barns, silos and church steeples where trees are sparse.  You can try fastening a nest box for owls about fifteen feet up on a tree trunk if you live near a golf course or farm.

 Screech owls prefer abandoned woodpecker holes at the edge of a neglected orchard or field.  They will love boxes lined with an inch or two of wood shavings.  You may attract a second tenant in one season—a kestrel, if you clean out the box in late spring after the young owls have fledged.

 You need to provide drainage, ventilation and easy access for monitoring and maintenance for the boxes.  A mixture of concrete and sawdust offers protection other houses cannot provide—squirrels cannot chew their way in.



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