Nest Box Design: Our BEST DESIGN Details from 25 years of Practice

this week we're gonna see the best design for unburden s box that we've been able to figure out in 25 years stay tuned [Music] so we've had several rounds of nest boxes different designs mostly recycled wood this I remember was from a fence that was taken down and we recycled so these are getting old there's some details in the design of this that I don't like but I just didn't know as well one it's important that the bottom be recessed within within the edges have not tacked on to the bottom that was a big difference these bottoms now brought a lot less than they used to and we've since changed so this you'll see is chamfered or angled the bottom here is angled when we cut it so that we get a real drip edge you see there's a little bit of it there but that's important as a water drop comes down the side it gathers here and then it drips because if this is flat if you cut this flush because it's easier to cut the water drop will come around and often then go and capillary action will soak in so little details but make a big difference it's also nice to always open from the same side most of our nest boxes now our right side opening so we come to the nest box we know that this is the this is the screw that will make that it opens from this side we have two screws one here and one on the back is this oh this one isn't this is a this is actually a left side opening huh no it's not how do we over open this one gee don't even know how how this one gets opened we have some old ones that we used to take the top off yeah the key is to try to standardize this is not a definitely not a standard a few features that we tested over the years that we really like one is a big overhang that's really nice because you really reduce the chance that water gets in the top inside through the hole so that's nice and the other little design feature is make the roofs just a bit bigger than the nest box so that makes that much less chance that wall gets in right there so those are two features that we we always tend to do now so over the years we've modified them let me show you another one this is one of the most recent one this is the last batch we made so it just so happened we couldn't have we didn't have boards wide enough to overhang on the side but we could overhang the front we did do the chamfered edge all of them are angled so they're here it's angled if you could see that from here so that one is angled this one is angled and then these are all caught in the stream here these are all right side opening even things like this angle that one was actually put on cut wrong should have been cut this way so sometimes when you're producing them in quantity do make mistakes again the idea of having all the holes on the same side means you don't have to look around where they are so that's a nice little feature just to show you that break our own rules some of these are left opening some are right opening just a few of the features in this case this was recycled fence boards the red ones and it's very important up it's just louver Ian just meant to be it melted and shows a little yeah just want to show you forgot to show the inside and I can show you with this board we once I once did nest boxes where I used this kind of fence on the front and that was a big mistake because I had put him up in that same day I could hear something in a nest box scurrying around and I thought how that's funny it's it's scurrying but it not coming out and so imagine there was the hole here what I realized was this is too slick and the bird trying to grab couldn't grab to get out so what I had to do was I had to gauge the inside of the board's to make it rough so the bird could actually cloth to get out so what we do on these is we used recycled fence boards but we used raw this is raw cut not planed pine and so you see it's it's quite it's quite rough and it's not a problem for the bird to grab on to climb out so whatever you use make sure if it's planed would make sure you rough up at the entrance some people tack on a little piece of hardware cloth that works too but you want something imagine a little ladder that's very easy to climb out otherwise the bird actually can get trapped and die in the nest box and you don't want nest boxes to become traps so make sure that if you're using smooth wood you keep it to the sides the back the top but not the front the front you want to be the roughest piece of wood you can get the key for a long-lasting nest box is to have it dry inside so you see that one is really dry inside that's that's really nice we want them dry they a little bit of stain because hey it does happen but it also this one had been used at some point you can see the the staining from the birds droppings the young droppings I really liked this was a really nice design we just didn't have enough wood to do them all this way another little feature so that's filling up and then closed feature that makes them work better is overlap the back lip here in fact that one should have been flipped the other way the edge should have gone this way there's angles and cuts but that makes that little overlap prevents water as much from getting in there I missed stickler for little details because details is what makes if you're gonna do the effort of putting an S box and you get an extra 10 years of life out of it that makes a big difference yeah maybe we can find I don't even think we have some of the really old ones that the bottom or the floor was tacked underneath go see see some of the other models and so that's it so just going from one to the other try to organize a logical route so in this case we have the nest box it tend to be on posts that that are in a row and so just zigzag through the orchard going one row doing these going to the next series there and walking through them and so a three inch and a two inch screen and always the same just showed just see one if you're in the u.s. always use Robertson head or square head so that when you put it on your drill the screw can actually hold let's see if you can just put it on the end of it put it on the bit it's really nice that when you put it on let it go it will stay so that is so helpful when you're dealing with things like nest boxes and you're having to put in screws without them falling I must say those green ones are a little better right now than brown ones little details but we do have brown screws but the green ones are nicer because if they fall on the ground they tend to be a little easier to see than the brown ones they both ideally they'd be fluorescent orange but you do want to be careful because whatever you drop you'll tend to find with the tractor tire some point in the future so here's some of our collection of broken nest boxes that are waiting to be repaired now some beyond hope and others just have one piece or so to repair one of the most useful things over the years we found to be able to use wood effectively is to have a template of each nest box and the jigs so this would be even the jigs which means these would be the jigs for where we drill holes and what happens is as we're doing a project and we have scrap pieces of wood we keep all the scraps and then we can take even a small scrap and say oh we could make the floor for a four by four Rand box so this has allowed us to really not there's really no waste of wood here and by having this as we cut pieces we just put them in our stockpile and they're ready to go next time we do an assembly round for the different nest boxes so we have here our template pieces for Kestrel which are really big so we don't often have scrap pieces but if we're cutting a big board we will have some some template piece orchestral nest box pieces very handy half templates and never never use them to assemble them I just want to put up one more don't do it keep the template separate so that's it you saw how to maintain the nest boxes and the details for a good design I'll put the plans for these nest boxes in the the link for the plans below and just get started now still the time usually by early May you want to have your nest boxes up as much as possible in our climate certainly if you're farther south but there are second nests as well so get doing this is the time and if you miss this year hey put it on the calendar for next year thanks for watching intrigue check out the virtual tour the permaculture orchard half trees already ruining course calm subscribe please check out some of the other videos for playlists there's more to come stay tuned bye hope you enjoyed the details of nest box design in the best one that we've figured out in 25 years thanks for watching see you next time bye bye

Channel: Stefan Sobkowiak - The Permaculture Orchard

Views: 62,682

Keywords: Nest Box Design, tree swallow nest box, chickadee nest box, house wren nest box, bluebird nest box, house sparrow nest box, bird house nest box, bird nest box diy, bird nest box cleaning, bird nest boxes plans free, bird nest box making, wren nest box, kestrel nest box, starling nest box, starling house, woodpecker nest box, nest box plans for birds, permaculture orchard, stefan sobkowiak

Id: X6zB9gX39kM

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020