Mr. Chocolate’s mother is an avid bird watcher. She has various bird feeders and baths in her garden, and from that I think Mr. Chocolate developed a bit of a bird sense himself. One of the first things he installed when we moved into our home two years ago was a little bird feeder that hung close to the window of the playroom. Juliet loved sitting by the window watching the birds. Birds is one of those few words she can kind of say (sounds kinda like brrdd), and I think that she liked being able to associate the word with those little colorful things that twittered about the feeder day in and day out.
This winter it’s been a feeding frenzy due to the horrible snow-covered winter we are having. On a daily basis we see cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, woodpeckers, and other birds I can’t recognize, but Mr. Chocolate’s mom does and teaches the kids. So it was no big surprise when Drake decided recently that he wanted to build a birdhouse for the birds. Mr. Chocolate and Drake discussed the kind of house he wanted to make, Mr. Chocolate did some research on what birds like in their homes and one Saturday afternoon they got to work. This was their finished product.
Mr. Chocolate read that birds prefer maple and pine wood for their homes and since pine is a bit of a softer wood to work with and the cold weather, he went with maple. Drake wanted the home to be for a chickadee so Mr. Chocolate cut the entrance hole in accordance to their size and made the height of the house suited to what he read is their preference.
Measuring the roof
Drake wanted to paint the house but we read that birds often don’t care for the paint smell, so we convinced him to color it with crayons instead. There is also no perch because we read that squirrels can sometimes invade homes with the use of a perch, so for the safety of the eggs we thought it be better to leave one out. Mr. Chocolate used 3/4 inch maple. The sides are 5.5 inch wide boards and roof is 7.5 inch wide boards. The angle is 45 degrees and he used 1.5 1.5 inch common galvanized nails throughout to hold it together. The base is 4×4 inches and the peak is 9 inches high based on the chickadee. Mr. Chocolate still needs to attach a hook at the top for us to hang it outside once the weather gets a little nicer. We can’t wait to see who makes their little home in Drake’s birdhouse!
Drake labeled it birdhouse just in case the birds didn’t know what it was
Do you have a bird feeder or bird home? What type of birds visit?
apricot / 457 posts
This is so cute! I love how he labeled it for the birds – I’m sure they’d be clueless about what it was until they saw “birdhouse”
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
@lisa1783: I know those poor birds would have been so confused, thank goodness for that label heehee
grapefruit / 4923 posts
my husband loves looking at the different birds in our yard and is trying to teach our LO about them. i’d love to get a bird feeder (although ours won’t be DIY).
guest
This is the cutest birdhouse ever!