bird box

[wii man]

I built a bird box at school and have now out it in my back garden but no birds live in there it has been hanging there for months why won't they go in?

[Thunderbird+]

Hi wii man,
I built a nest box at scool too,(long time ago now) the teacher made me paint it and when I took it home and hung it in the garden the birds was just not interested.
My big brother said maybe they dont like the colour sceme (sky blue with a white roof), anyway so we sanded it down and sure enough, we saw some sparrows checking out the des res in the following febrary and by april/may we watched them building a nest, later we saw them fly in with beak-fulls of grubs and we realised they was feeding chicks.
I think you really need to be patient and dont expect to see much too soon!, let it 'weather in' a bit and face the hole eats or north, so that the midday sun dont make it too hot for them. Good Luck Tbird+

[wii man]

thanks it isn't painted though and it is really wonky i think that might be the problem. you get three stars

[WendyS]

Thunderbird always has the right answers! It's important to let your bird box blend in with the scenery and birds like them best when they're not too obvious and are partly covered by leaves so that other birds can't see where they're nesting. Also, the box should never face south and the midday sun, because the heat of this would kill all the baby birds. If you can fix it on a north facing fence in the shade and get ivy or some other climbing plants to grow up all around it, I bet little blue tits would find it a good place in which to nest, but it's important that no cats or other predators can get near the box, otherwise the birds won't feel safe nesting there. . Hope next spring you'll have more luck.