If you’ve been thinking about building your own wild bird nesting boxes for the Spring season, this article may help you determine appropriate sizes for the birds you hope to attract.

Appropriateness of size considerations are vital to bird house success. First to attract the right birds and distract the wrong ones. Next to ensure that the parents and nestlings are safe from predators. And finally correct temperature and ventilation.

How elaborate you make your bird house depends on your personal sense of aesthetics. For the most part, all the birds care about is their safety and the right dimensions: box height, depth and floor, diameter of entrance hole, and height of hole above the box floor. Continue Reading »

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Bird houses should be easily accessible to prying human eyes. Not so that you can spy on and disrupt the nesting behaviour of your wild birds, but so you can see how your birds are doing and, when the time comes, easily clean out the house.

Part of being a responsible bird house landlord is your willingness to look after your wild tenants. If you monitor your bird houses every week and evict unwanted creatures such as house sparrows, starlings, rodents, snakes, and insects, you’ll have much more success in the long run.

For your own safety, please be careful when you inspect those wild bird houses. Continue Reading »

This short article is for people who are having problems with wild birds and window collisions.

Contemporary homes and modern office buildings often use insulated and reflective glass in their windows and even to replace entire walls. Although these windows may be aesthetically pleasing to humans they are lethal to birds. Unfortunately, many birds cannot distinguish the difference between the real sky and a reflection of the sky in a plate of reflective glass.

In the United States alone, it is estimated that each year during migration, millions of wild birds fly full force into windows and are seriously injured or instantly killed.

You can minimize these collisions by breaking up the reflection on the outside of the window with a window screen, flash tape and bird netting or a combination of all three.
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The most common complaints I hear from others are regarding problems of uninvited guests at the feeder.

These ‘guests’ fall into two categories - those interested in the seeds (squirrels and chipmunks, rats and mice, starlings and house sparrows), and those interested in a bird for dinner (cats and hawks).

If you have trees, you will get to know squirrels. You may marvel at their antics, until they take over your bird feeders. Then you’ll either love them or hate them. Continue Reading »