We have made a collection of free bird house plans for general and
species-specific nest box plans for you to use to build your own.
Bluebird House Plans
Here are
bluebird nest box plans that is fairly simple, you make all your cuts out of
one 1"x6"x4' board. The plans can be used to attract either Western or Eastern
Bluebirds. We have more information on our
bluebird
house plans and
Eastern
Bluebird pages.
Wren House Plans
Very similar to bluebird houses, the
wren house
plans are also made from one 1"x6"x4' board. Mounting location will be
different as well as hole diameter size. You can read more by following the link
above.
Purple Martin Bird House Plans
As you may already know, when building a bird house for Purple Martins, you
are
not building for one pair, but rather for several pair of birds because Purple
Martins are colony nesters. You are essentially building an apartment complex
that consists of several units or rooms for each pair of birds. You can also use
gourds that are hung together instead of building a house. Here are
purple martin plans for 1-level, 8 rooms (pdf file). We have additional
information as well on our
purple martin bird house plans page.
Barn Swallows, Phoebe and Robin Bird House Plans
Robins, phoebes and barn swallows are not cavity nesters so instead of a
closed-in
house, they rather prefer to nest on shelf or platforms with the front being
completely open. They can be 4-sided, with a floor, 2 walls and a roof or if you
have a sheltered area, like under an eave or porch, you can just build an open
platform with no walls or roof. Here are
robin nesting shelf plans made easily from one 1"x10"x4' board. More free
plans can be found here at
Phoebe and Robin nest box plans.
If you want additional resources here are some great bird house plans books from Amazon:
How to Build a Bird House Video
And here are additional pages with free bird house plans and building bird
houses construction tips:
Bird
House Dimensions Chart
A quick reference guide of bird house dimensions for 34 species including
chickadees, swallows, hawks, owls, wrens, nuthatches and more.