The Craftiest Workshop

I found some bird house dimensions in a wood working magazine that my husband used to subscribe to. Birds actually like a certain size of house depending on their size and habits.

I was wanting to build a house for my chickadee friends. I know that they need shelter for our cold winters and it would be an easy way to find them when I wanted to feed them by hand.

I cut pieces of pallet boards to the measurement above for a chickadee.

I sanded everything on the inside making sure there were no splinters. My husband cut the hole with a Forstener bit. I have trouble with keeping the bit in one place.

You can see how the pieces come together. The roof overhangs the hole side. I had looked online for some examples of chickadee houses.

I used the brad nailer to put it together then painted just the outside brown with some outdoor paint the we got as a mis-tint for cheap.

I hung it up close to our willow thicket where the chickadees always come out of. It probably should have been higher but I was too lazy to go get a ladder.

While our son was visiting and we were doing some branch clean up in that area, we checked the birdhouse and it was still vacant.

That was about a month ago.

I was cutting the grass and rosehips near the birdhouse the other day and noticed some twigs sticking out. Later, using my binoculars from a distance, I spied, not a chickadee, but a House Wren moving in.

I hadn’t seen much of my chickadees since the weather has been warmer. This week that sure changed. The chickadee pairs must of all had babies at the same time. They started training them to fly to me for peanuts. Sometimes I get five chickadees at a time flying at me. We decided to put up a new feeding station so they can get birdseed and sunflower seeds easier and come to me less often for peanuts. They have already started using it.

On a side note, the flowers in my wildflower/butterfly garden will be blooming soon. Lots of green and no dandelions or grass. Hopefully there aren’t a lot of other weeds in there.

In the fall, once the wren migrates south, I will clean out the bird house and see if I can encourage the chickadees to use it for winter by calling to them right beside it. I might have to build a few more houses based on how many babies are flying about. Perhaps they only use bird houses during breeding season to protect their young from predators?? I guess we will find out.