Birdhouses

[Beeman]

What type of bird houses do you have up or build and put up? What type of birds do you attract with them?
I like bluebirds so I have built a lot of bluebird houses and have done well attracting them. I have always built the traditional bluebird society house with the standard hole. this year I built a few Univ. of KY. bluebird houses with a slot at the top of the frt. board. I will monitor to see how they do.
I've got a purple Martin house on a pole that was a store bought gift, haven't gotten any Martins though.

[Rod Torgeson]

I have several of the typical bluebird houses which are suitable for several different birds. I don't have bluebirds where I live so I get tree swallows. I moved here in 2000 and starting in 2001 I have had tree swallows every year. First sighting this year was two days ago. I had to put tin around the hole because Northern Flickers were trying to get in. Also the tin keeps the squirrels from enlarging the hole.

Rod<---in Appleton, WA

[GrannyG]

We do not have bluebirds, but have plenty of purple martins. We have up the big plastic gourd houses, 12 on a pole, plus the plastic martin houses. We have alot of sparrows, grackles, some blue jays, mockingbirds, a few wrens, and now the scissortails are in. There are wild white wing doves out of Old Mexico that are beautiful. I have had the plastic martin houses snap off the poles in high winds. I prefer the all metal ones, or wooden ones, that are extremely secure on the high poles.

[cc]

We put up bluebird houses and have a lot here. We had one that had a little ground squirrel set up housekeeping in. Found her when we were taking them down to clean them for the spring. The other birds seem to just nest here and there! I don't know where the woodpeckers nest but there are several families (and different kinds) of them that nest here. We also have a red hawk that has a nest in the big oak in the horse pasture. I don't know much about birds but we do enjoy them. Got a bird book and still can't tell one kind from the other.

[uncle Will in In.]

Mostly we have gourds up for the wrens. One pair of wrens need about three houses. While the hen is setting, the male is building another nest. They work together feeding and she lays another nest of eggs very soon after the first one hatches. We have a gourd about 8 feet outside our glass door. Very entertaining to watch them build a nest out of pine needles and sticks they find that are sometimes 4 inches long. The hole is the size of a quarter without a perch. They hang on to the hole with their feet and flip the stick around in their bill until they get one end started through the hole. They won't quit carrying in sticks until they have the gourd filled up level with the hole. I have been making the holes colser to the bottom of the gourd so they don't have to work so hard to prepare the nest. I draw a ring around a quarter to size the hole that I cut out with a drill bit made to cut sideways like the Roto-Zip bits.