8.7 Bird boxes

You can attract birds to your site by providing them with nesting boxes. This is especially important in urban areas where disturbance and destruction of many habitats has an adverse effect on breeding populations. As well as fulfilling an important conservation role, nest boxes are excellent education tools and people will learn a lot about the birds that use them.

You can buy or make bird boxes. Different species have different requirements. There are, for example, specially-designed boxes for owls, kestrels, ducks, and flycatchers. So decide which species are most suited

to your site and find suitable sites for the boxes. As a general rule garden bird boxes are designed for hole nesters such as blue tits and great tits and open nesters like robins and pied wagtails. Bird boxes with holes should be not be surrounded by dense foliage, as the adult birds like to be able to have a clear view of the entrance hole. However, boxes designed with an open front need to be protected by foliage for safety of offspring. The Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) has an excellent series of leaflets which give advice on the many different boxes that you can make. At the end of each nesting season clean out all nest boxes to eradicate parasites and other sources of infection. Use warm water, wear gloves, and wash your hands thoroughly when you have completed the task. Birds will use nesting boxes as roosting places in winter so their proper care and maintenance throughout the year is essential.

Bird tables

Bird tables can be put up at your wildlife site. They, too, can be bought or made. You can make a simple bird table from a piece of square-shaped plywood measuring approximately 50 x 50 centimetres, mounted on top of a long pole.

The pole should be about 2.5 metres long, high enough from the ground to keep marauding cats at bay. The table should be surrounded by low, wooden lips to prevent the food from falling off the table and enticing the birds to the ground where they could be vulnerable to cats. Drainage gaps in each corner between the lips will help rainwater to flow away. A roof over the table can be ornamentally attractive and will stop the food from getting wet in bad weather. Make sure you provide a variety of food. Birds eat much more than crumbs. Cereals, lumps of fat, nuts, cheese, sunflower seed, and special bird food mixtures available in shops, garden centres, or nature reserves visitor’s centres, will attract a wide variety of species. Clean the table regularly with warm water to get rid of parasites and other sources of infection.

Information about bird boxes and feeding tables is obtainable from your nearest Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserve, or from:

or

Tel. 0767 680551