[McPeake] Do you own a few acres? Do you want to do something for wildlife? If you lack
nest cavities on your property, here's a suggestion for you. Consider building or purchasing some
nest boxes & putting them in strategic locations on your property.
Eastern bluebirds are a prime example of the species that have benefited from nest boxes.
Other species include wrens, wood ducks, woodpeckers, maybe even a tree squirrel or raccoon.
Joining us today is Caroll Guffey, Extension Forrester. I'm really glad Caroll is here
today because I can barely hammer a nail. And Caroll is going to talk to us about how
to build these nest boxes. Caroll, what do we need to do?
[Guffey] Ok, what we are going to do Becky, today, is make a bluebird box. And this is
the basic design & to make it accessible to bluebirds we need to use an inch & a half
hole. You can vary the size hole to vary the species of bird that use it. And what we do,
we start out with just a five foot long, one by six piece of lumber. And I've actually
shown you, I've drawn off the different cuts we'll make on this board & I've already put
the holes in it. You probably wouldn't do that to start with, but just to show how it
works I've got that done ahead of time. We make all our cuts & we end up with these six
boards that we'll put together to make this box.
[McPeake] And which one of these boards, which one is the front & back, the bottom? Can you
show us?
[Guffey] This is going to be the back of the board. Of course this is the front with the
entrance hole. This will be the roof. And then we have the two sides & then the bottom.
And I would suggest waiting on the bottom because based on the thickness of the material
& it varies a little bit, I would make all these cuts except for the bottom, & then I
would put them all together. This is the two sides as they fit together. And then of course
the roof goes there. And this would be the point where you would actually measure the
opening to make sure that your bottom actually fits because, again, based on the thickness
of the material, it may not be exactly the measurements we have in the faq sheet.
[McPeake] Well Caroll, what types of wood would you recommend for building a nest box?
[Guffey] Becky, we have a lot of different options on the wood. The one option we would
not want to use would be treated lumber, because that's not good for the baby birds. We can
use western red cedar, this is an example of that. We can use eastern red cedar, which
is common in Arkansas. Both of those will last for a long time without any type of treatment,
but they are a little more difficult to work with. They split a little.
[McPeake] Yeah, this one has a splitting problem right here.
[Guffey] So what I have here is just our pine lumber. Southern yellow pine lumber. It's
very easy to work with, very common, it's going to last quite a bit of time, but if
you really want it to last longer, you can paint it. Paint it a light color because of
the temperatures we have here in Arkansas.
[McPeake] That's for sure, it gets really, really hot here in Arkansas, but don't paint
the insides.
[Guffey] That's right, just paint the outside.
[McPeake] Just the outside.
[Guffey] Again, the paint is really more for the people, it's not for the birds, because
they really don't care one way or the other.
[McPeake] Can we use the same dimensions that you designed for that, just expand them a
little bit, and make something like a wood duck box?
[Guffey] This is a similar design. It uses, it's bigger material & again for the wood
duck, we have a much bigger hole than we do for a small bluebird.
[McPeake] Ok, well how would you recommend that we place these out once we get our nest
box built?
[Guffey] If you think you want to nail it to a tree, that's probably not the best option,
but you can nail it to a tree as long as you don't use steel or iron nails. Use aluminum
nails. Nailing it to the tree, again, may not be the best option because it kind of
damages the tree for one thing. It also, it's more or less permanent. It's hard to move
it if you need to.
[McPeake] That's true. And predators, they love to get up & down trees & get into those
nest boxes & eat the eggs & nestlings, so if you can put it on a pole, you could actually
put a predator control device around it & keep them out.
[Guffey] That's right. That's a much better option, a pole or a fence post with some type
of predator preventer.
[McPeake] Well, thank you so much Caroll for visiting with us today. Check out our website
for more information on wildlife & wildlife habitat.
[Narrator] To learn more about this & other topics, contact your county extension agent
& visit uaex.edu