Our smaller brothers need comfortable housing just like we do. What to make a birdhouse from? How to decorate it, and what you need to know so that the birds live comfortably in the birdhouse? We have prepared some useful recommendations, as well as 27 examples of amazing houses that have an unusual design.
What to make a birdhouse from?
Traditionally, birdhouses are made from wooden boards 1.5-2.5 centimeters thick. That part of the board that will be inside the structure is not processed - it is not polished or impregnated. Externally, the house can be made smooth, soaked with drying oil or painted with odorless oil paint.
If we talk about alternative options, today summer residents make bird houses from their materials at hand. For example, shoes, watering cans, porcelain dishes, samovars and even lanterns look unusual as birdhouses.
The main thing is that all the materials from which the house is made are environmentally friendly and do not harm the birds. You also need to equip the dwelling with a short stick at the entrance if starlings live there. Sparrows, nuthatches, tits love houses with roofs, but flycatchers and robins need an option with an open wall in front.
How to decorate a birdhouse?
Many poultry farmers oppose excessive decoration of bird houses, believing that it scares away birds. But despite this, birds continue to populate birdhouses of unusual design.
The easiest way is to paint the house, draw windows, flowers, insects on it, or make it in the form of a watermelon slice. You can also decorate it with mosaics, wine corks, sea pebbles.
What should be remembered when installing a bird house?
1. The birdhouse is mounted on a tree or a pole, it can also be hung on a rope or rope. At the same time, the distance from the ground should be at least two meters so that cats or dogs do not reach the birds.
2. Do not install a bird house near the windows, as the birds wake up early and can wake up with their singing or chirping.
3. The entrance to the house should be directed towards sunrise, so that it is well heated during the day.
4. It is necessary to ensure that the birdhouse is in the shade, not in direct sunlight, otherwise birds can get heatstroke.
Since 1906, the whole world has been celebrating International Bird Day on April 1st. This day is considered the starting day for the construction of bird houses. The Russians learned about this holiday in 1918.
Traditionally, birdhouses are started in April, but it is not too late to build a birdhouse in May and June.
The world's largest birdhouse is located in Belgorod. Its height is five meters. But this house is not meant for birds to live there. It serves as a workshop in which feeders and bird houses are created.
Product designers are constantly creating interesting and stylish birdhouses. For example, specialists from Portland made .
Birdhouses are special houses for birds that adults and children make with their own hands. Previously, birds independently found a place to live, but today many summer residents and animal lovers make feeders and birdhouses from improvised materials. If you want birds to settle in your summer cottage, try to do it yourself creative houses and attach them to trees. Birdhouses are a real salvation for city birds, because in big cities there are practically no hollow trees left.
What to make a birdhouse
The bird house should be suitable for a certain type of birds, be comfortable and environmentally friendly. If you decide to build a birdhouse on your own site, then consider landscape design. Wood is most often used as materials, since materials such as fiberboard, chipboard or thick cardboard do not tolerate moisture and the effects of precipitation. However, they can be used to make seasonal houses. Also, such houses can be installed in corners protected from wind and rain.
Birdhouse drawing
In a similar way, a birdhouse is made of plywood. First, decide on the drawing and dimensions of the birdhouse. Make a marking of all parts on the material. All parts should be of such a size that the bottom is the largest. Don't forget to leave corrections. All sections are ground, and then the parts are glued and fastened with self-tapping screws. Screw the bottom with screws, and the roof so that it is removable. In the future, it will be necessary to carry out general cleaning in the birdhouse.
Creative birdhouse made of cardboard
Start building your bird house by sketching. Carefully cut out all the details and connect with wood glue. You can protect the birdhouse from moisture by varnishing it. To make the house original, decorate it with acrylic paints with the children. Such a birdhouse will definitely last the season and will appeal to small birds.
It's even easier to make a cardboard birdhouse out of a box. Pick up a suitable cardboard box, make a hole in it, figure out how to fix the roof. Since the cardboard is light, before gluing the parts, consider mounting the treehouse. It remains only to decorate and the birdhouse is ready.
Birdhouses made from plastic bottles
Outside, the bottle can be wrapped with twine. Inside the house you need to insulate and give it extra comfort with yarn or sisal. If you want to be creative, then try decorating the craft with acrylic paints. It remains to come up with devices on how to hang a birdhouse from a bottle so that it does not sway much from the wind.
Birdhouse ideas from improvised materials
After your birdhouse from improvised materials is ready, it's time to figure out how to fix it to a tree. To easily hang a birdhouse, a special bar is attached to its back side.
You can hang with a wire, but try to hang it either evenly or with a slight inclination forward.
creative birdhouse
Together with the children, you can make different birdhouses and look forward to the settlement of birds in your garden.
craft: Cardboard house
I suggest you take a look at my master class.
This master class is designed for children in grades 5-7 and creative people. All materials for manufacturing can be found in any home. The house is made of thick cardboard, pasted over with interlining and painted with yellow tint, decorated with flowers and grass, the roof of the house is pasted over with dermantine.
Target: teach the technology of making a house, develop a plot idea.
A beautiful house will serve as a decoration in your winter garden or garden plot. A little free time and only the desire to create will not prevent you from making such a craft.
To create such a wonderful cardboard craft "Bird House", we will need the following materials:
1. Thick cardboard
2. PVA glue
3. TITAN WILD glue
4. Scissors
5. Simple pencil
6. Velvet paper
7. Fluorescent paper
8. Color paste universal yellow
9. Water based paint
10. Tassel
12. Interlining
13. Dermantine
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We make a template: a 15.5 cm x 29.5 cm rectangle for the roof and two 14 cm x 14 cm squares for the sides of the house.
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We take the templates of the house, transfer it with a simple pencil to thick cardboard and cut out the details of the house.
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Now we begin to assemble the house, glue all the details with TITAN WILD glue (you can use another glue, I had one).
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From non-woven fabric, we cut out the details of the house according to the templates and begin to glue it with PVA glue. We start gluing from the sides in turn: first, the right side was smeared and the interlining was glued, the allowances were taken to the front and back sides of the house, we will also do the same with the left side of the house. We will do this work with the front and back sides of the house (details without allowances).
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After the house has dried, cut out the window of the house. Now let's start painting the house. We dilute the color scheme with water-based paint and a little PVA glue and with the help of a sponge we begin to paint over our house.
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The next step is the decorating step. We cut out flowers, grass, petals, butterflies from fluorescent paper from velvet paper according to patterns (you can use non-loose fabric).
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Let's start at the front of the house. We glue curly grass, then petals with flowers, and finally - grass.
On the side of the house we glue the grass, flowers along the grass and a butterfly in the middle of the side of the house, the same work must be done with the other side of the house. On the back side - first glue the grass, and the flowers scattered and along the grass.
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Then we proceed to the manufacture of the roof. Paste the roof detail with dermantine.
Materials for making children's cardboard crafts "Bird House"
You will need :
Thick cardboard
dry moss
Acrylic or gouache paints
Artificial twigs, leaves, flowers
Glue "Moment-universal"
Making children's crafts from cardboard "Bird House":
From thick cardboard cut out a strip according to the pattern.
On cardboard, we make markings according to the data in the size chart.
Carefully make folds along the drawn lines.
On the wide part, which is on the right, we cut out a circle with a 4 cm diameter with a clerical knife.
Glue our house.
We cut out a roof detail from cardboard - 12 * 7 cm in size. Bend it in half and glue it.
Then we need to cut out the base for our craft with a size of 17 * 9 cm. We also cut it out of cardboard. Lubricate the house with glue from below and glue it to the base. We paint the house with paints.
So, we have prepared our cardboard house and now we will decorate it.
We glue the roof of the house, the base with glue and sprinkle them with dry moss. On the roof we sprinkle lightly, while on the base more carefully so that the cardboard does not show through the moss.
We also glue a small branch to the base, on which we attach the bird.
How to make a bird feeder
Bird feeders are a great topic for both bird lovers and inventors of small architectural forms. How to do simple or fancy feeder from cardboard boxes, from plastic bottles, from cans, from a wooden block or a bucket of mayonnaise, as well as from packaging for a cake and from everything else, what to feed titmouse and what sparrows eat look and read - ideas fly in the air and land on this page.
The cutest and most beautiful "cafe" for birds
What a beauty! Master Class
1. With a hot knife, cut the bottle in two places along the basting. See for yourself what width of the strip to cut, there are no exact dimensions.
Cut according to the mark 2.See the picture below. Cut out a wider strip, get a more squat figure, cut out less - the product will be higher.
The height of the feeder depends on the height of the cut piece 3. At the bottom of the bottle, cut a hole for the birds to land on, as shown in the photo. Do not forget to walk along the edge of the window with a hot knife so as to melt the cut and make it not sharp. The bird will sit on the edge of the window with its paws and should not be cut.
To prevent the birds from cutting their paws Paint the bottom of the bottle with acrylic paint.
4. When the paint is dry, make two holes with a hole punch (or a hot nail) in the bottom of the bottle, on either side of the entrance to the feeder at the same distance.
Hole punch makes holes neater than a nail 5. Symmetrical holes must also be made in the upper part of the bottle, twine will be threaded into these holes, with which the upper and lower parts of the bottle will be connected and this beauty will be hung.
Connect the bottom and top of the structure with twine 6. Color the top of the bottle and don't forget the cork. Let dry.
7. The twine will be threaded according to the scheme:
The twine connects the top and bottom of the feeder, and the knots are pulled up through the hole in the cork 8 Make a hole in the cork, take the knots and pull the two ends of the twine by the knots through the hole in the cork.
Pass the twine through the hole in the cork 9Decorative detail. Make additional holes, as shown in the photo, on the bottom and top of the bottle and fasten the parts with decorative rivets. This will additionally fasten the details and give the look of a “brand item”.
Rivet holes 
Align the rivet holes on the bottom of the product with the same holes on the top.
Rivets especially decorate 
Raffia palm string bow And from such bottles, funny feeders would also turn out.
minion feeder From cardboard boxes.
Any cardboard box with a hole cut out, hung up and filled with food, is a feeder. For example, a box from Rafaelo or boxes from New Year's children's gifts, which are accumulated in every house in abundance after the New Year.
We use milk bags, paint and decorate with buttons and twigs. Glue with silicone glue with a glue gun. (I bought myself a glue gun at a hardware store, it was 3 times cheaper there than in a needlework store).
Feeder from a milk bag with buttons 
Cardboard box feeder 
Raffaelo box 
Christmas gift boxes By the way, if there is no balcony, but only a window, then the cardboard device will come in handy, it will not break the window when you lower it out the window onto the windowsill. My only fear is that in this house the neighbors are not happy to feed the pigeons so close to the cars. It would be necessary to make the hole in the box small, then the pigeons would not be able to feed on the windowsill, but the tits would scurry back and forth and delight the child and the kitten with their bustle. And so after all it's boring to look at the dove's ass sticking out of the box.
The girl hangs the feeder outside the window (So much effort, but only the pigeon's ass is visible). Bird "bistros" from cans
Tin can feeders 
To prevent the birds from cutting themselves, smooth the landing edge of the feeder. Baby formula cans are very bird-friendly.
Lauren Martin, a French horticulturist, has set up a whole feeder garden in her home.
From plastic bottles, it's easy.
The simplest homemade bird canteen that allows you to pour a full bottle of seeds, as a small hole prevents the seeds from getting enough sleep.
The simplest bird feeder We do this according to the scheme:
How to make the easiest plastic bottle feeder 
Make it easy From other improvised materials.
From the packaging for the cake.
Cake for tits wooden bar idea
bird bar idea From plastic buckets for mayonnaise.
Bucket for birds1 
Bucket for birds2 wooden blocks
It is quite difficult to make, but the look is very eco-friendly From whole coconut.
When the holiday is over and the flesh of the coconut is eaten, the capacity of the coconut feeder will be filled with simple food in the form of seeds and the exotic restaurant will turn into a budget eatery.
Two options for one technology:
How and where to place top dressing.
This is actually an important question. After all, we live among people and our interests or the interests of our feathered friends should not conflict with the interests of the people around us.
If the droppings of birds that we bring to our window or balcony regularly fall on the lower balconies or on the cars of our neighbors, expect trouble. And do we need it?
Solving this problem is simple. You need to know a few things.
1 Feed pigeons only on the ground, away from parking lots, balconies and window sills, so that pigeon droppings do not harm us and our neighbors.
2 Sparrows, unlike tits, do not fly away immediately as soon as they take food, they sit in the same place where there is food and poop in the same place and throw the husks from the seeds in the same place. Such a fellow sits on the edge of a bottle or a perch, takes the seeds, pecks and throws the husk back into the seeds or next to them. Spit, brat, all around. Tits are afraid of him and wait, sitting on the branches nearby, when he is full. Therefore, a container with seeds should be hung away from the wall of the house,
1. Here's at least how my neighbors did, look at the video.
This is a Yurok, they are wintering with us. These birds are like sparrows, they sit until they are full and try not to let the tits in, and the titmouse fly up, take a seed and peck out a seed from a branch.
2.Or place inside the balcony so you can clean up after your guests.
Cup on the balcony 
Titmouse love fat 
Serious feeder 
Titmouse on the slope of the window 
We fix the feeder with a dowel 
Feeder with lid - very convenient for filling with seeds 
"Bread pipeline" A child living in this house called this structure a "bread pipe"
What do tits eat
For feeding tits, unroasted sunflower seeds, unsalted lard, fat, nuts (chopped, with soft pulp, such as walnuts) and an exotic option - a sawn coconut suspended on a string, are suitable.
What not to give birds
You can not give salted fat, fried seeds, smoked meats, rye bread.
Titmouses will not eat either buckwheat, or millet, or rice.
But sparrows will eat millet and crushed grains and raisins.
By the way, wild grapes () on your balcony will also attract birds. An alpine jackdaw flies to us, see the video at the end of the article.
Fat treat
Treats for the birds Fat can simply be hung on a thread or cut into pieces and put in a vegetable net, I made such a design on my feeder, which is also an observation deck for my cats in the summer.