BUILDING BIRD HOUvSES 



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Fig. 23.— Flicli 

 mounted on 

 tree. 



cer house to be 

 post or stub of 



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Fig. 24. — Lumber diagrams for flicker 

 house shown in figure 23. Thick- 

 ness of boards ?-4 inch. 



placed in shaded places as the 

 metal becomes very hot in the 

 sun. 



Bird houses in the Southern 

 States have long been made 

 from gourds. The entrance 

 is in the side and a drain hole 

 in the bottom, as shown in 

 Figure 3. A piece of wire 

 through the neck for mount- 

 ing it completes the house. A 

 number of gourds thus pre- 

 pared and strung on a pole 

 seems to make a satisfactory 

 tenement house for a colony 

 of martins. Used singly they 

 are equally well adapted to 

 wrens and bluebirds. While 

 gourds are not durable when 

 exposed to the weather they 

 are easily replaced. 



Ordinary wooden boxes, if 

 clean, can be made into bird 

 houses by merel}^ nailing on a 

 cover and cutting out an 

 entrance hole. Such make- 

 shifts are rarely weatherproof 

 and are never pleasing to the 

 eye. Branches containing real 

 woodpecker holes, when ob- 

 tainable, are perhaps the best 

 attraction that can be offered 

 most house birds in the breed- 

 ing season. By carefully fit- 

 ting such a branch to a fruit 

 or shade tree its foreign origin 



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Fig. 25. — House to be 

 placed in tree for wood- 

 peckers, chickadees, 

 nuthatches or titmice. 



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Fig. 26. — Section of 

 house shown in 

 figure 25. 



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Fig. 27 Lumber diagrams of house 

 shown in figure 25, suitable for 

 downy woodpecker. By reducing 

 size of entrance it becomes right for 

 titmice and nuthatches. Thick- 

 ness of boards % inch. 



