Welcome!
Here is how to make bird nesting boxes.
It's that time of year when beautiful bird songs are filling the air with music. It is spring and birds are scouting places to build nests!
This is the perfect time to build your own bird nesting boxes.
Depending on the look you are going for, you can use lumber, 2x4's or any scrap wood you have on hand, which is what we did. We love the rustic look.
But we will talk about that below. Let's make some bird nesting boxes!
1. Your bird nesting box will consist of 4 pieces of wood attached to a backing board piece of wood.
So start by measuring the wood pieces with your measuring tape. Mark where you need to cut with a pencil.
We are hoping to attract robins to our bird nesting boxes (or robin nesting boxes), and a robin is a medium-sized bird, so our 4 pieces measured like this:
*If you want to attract smaller birds to your nesting box then you can adjust your wood sizes as needed. This size can be used as a nesting box guideline.
2. Carefully cut the wood pieces wearing your proper PPE. Gloves, eye safety gear, dust mask and any other PPE you need. Check what safety gear is required before using your tools and wear it.
And here are my own lovely gloves to protect my hands. Stay safe!
3. Now that you have your pieces cut, you will attach the two 9"x9" wood walls to the 9"x12" wood base and roof using either your staple gun or your nails and hammer. We used a pneumatic staple gun with our air compressor for ours and put about 3-4 staples where the house attached. You can do the same with a hammer and nails.
4. Once you have a basic bird nesting box built (2 walls attached to a roof and base), you can now attach that to the back of the nesting box with your pneumatic stapler or hammer and nails again.
The back piece is 12" high so when you attach your structure to it, make sure your leave a bit of the back showing either above or below the structure by about 3" as this is what you will use to attach it to your building.
By now, you should now have a small nesting box that looks like this: (I realize I look straight out of 1970 in this photo by the way, but this was last week lol).
5. Next, you are going to plan where you want to put your bird nesting boxes. We put ours (we built several) on an old building we have in the backyard to keep with the rustic look of it. I had hubby help attach the nesting boxes here as I am not very tall.
In the photo, you will see he is using a Dewalt 20V Compact Cordless 1/4" Impact Driver to attach our robin nesting boxes, which he says is "an awesome, very light drill". We use it often around here, it is very handy to have around.
Check price of Dewalt 20V Compact Cordless 1/4" Impact Driver on Amazon here
6. Drill the 2 deck screws into the exposed pieces of the backboard, attaching your bird nesting box to your building.
7. Voila! Nesting boxes ready for any bird, and like we said, we are hoping these nesting boxes will house some robins soon!
I love the rustic look ours created with the wood we had around. We left the bark on these robin nesting boxes on purpose because I just love how they look. And you will see, these don't have to be perfect!
If your cut of wood isn't right, as long as it fits that is ok! This is a very forgiving project and is great for a first time DIY.
Have a look at ours below!
Well I hope you enjoyed this article and that you find material around to create some gorgeous nesting boxes for the birds in your area. It's such a joy to watch birds make nests and have little families in them, especially if you have kids.
And if you want to bookmark this page, please do so, or save the Pin below to your favorite DIY Pinterest board. We would appreciate that :)
Happy spring!
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