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Build a kid-friendly birdhouse
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Build a perfect home for eastern bluebirds with some help from your own nest
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By Steve Maxwell, photos by Roger Yip, illustration by Len Churchill
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Let your kids' imaginations soar as you build these homes for a flock of local bluebirds
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If you've ever seen an eastern bluebird up close, you'll understand the attraction of building birdhouses for them. These delicate songbirds have striking blue feathers, unlike any other you'll see in Nature-and they need our help. Bluebird populations have de-clined to just 17 per cent of the levels seen 50 years ago. Effective nesting boxes could turn this situation around, but to make a real difference, we'll need a lot of bluebird houses. An inexpensive and easy-to-build design can help this plight. Get your kids involved and you can teach them a little about woodworking and the vanishing eastern bluebird at the same time. I built several with the help of my own children.
Although you can certainly make a batch of bluebird houses using smooth lumber, I recommend rough-cut 1x6 and 1x8 cedar. The main reason is you can find it at a good price from sawmills in most parts of Canada. It's also rot- resistant, safe for birds and perfectly suits an outdoor location. The only trouble with rough-cut wood is you'll find a natural variation in board thickness. So-called 1" rough lumber might be anything from 7/8" to 1 1/8" thick, depending on how the sawmill was set up. But, as you'll see, my design takes care of these discrepancies. You won't even have to do a whole lot of cutting to get parts to fit. These truly are easy-going birdhouses.
Hatch a Plan
Start by sawing all the listed parts to length only; cutting to width comes later. Use 1x6s to make everything but the roof-you'll need a 1x8 for this part. You can also edge-glue narrower wood to get the 6 3/4" roof dimensions required.
I chose a roof angle of 12º from level for no other reason than it looks good. Use a chop saw or a tablesaw to cut mitres on the top ends of the sides. You'll also need to create bevelled edges on the door, the back piece, and the front and back edges of the roof. As you'll see in the plans, the angled cuts that extend across the width of the parts are called “mitre” cuts, while the angles across the thickness of the boards are “bevel” cuts. In this project, all are 12º from square.
Now it's time to saw some of the parts to width. In preparation for assembly, cut the door, the bottom and the back to 4" widths. To bring the pieces together, I used a combination of weatherproof glue and 2"-long stainless-steel screws. You might be able to get away with finishing nails, but weather can cause them to become loose over time, while screws will hold firm.
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