Free bird house plans

One result of the increasingly popular interest in birds has been a definite movement to protect them and to concentrate them where they are especially desired. It is during the breeding period that birds are at their best, and people who love to see and hear them or who need their help in fighting insect pests are eager to offer inducements in the way of nesting sites to invite their presence at this season.

The transformation of a primeval wilderness into cultivated land has modified the distribution of birds to a marked degree. Species originally peculiar to treeless regions follow the ax and become common where previously unknown. At the same time, water birds disappear from the sites of ancestral marshes when they are drained and turned into cornfields.

Perhaps no group of birds has suffered greater disturbance by this process than those nesting in hollow trees. Forests have decreased to a small part of their former extent, and decaying trees suitable for occupancy by such birds are usually the first to be cut.

From an economic point of view, hole-nesting birds rank exceptionally high, and there are strong grounds for the evident desire to keep them in the vicinity of homesteads. To accomplish this the practice arose of erecting houses for the use of the more familiar species.

Gradually, as the nesting requirements of other birds have become better understood, the number of species occupying bird houses has increased.

This website contains instructions on how to make a bird house suitable for the different kinds of birds known to use them or likely to do so. It is designed to encourage the protection and study of birds in all sections of the United States.