Bird Friendly Nest Boxes and Feeders: 12 Easy-to-build Designs That Attract Birds to Your Yard

by Paul Meisel

Bird Friendly Nest Boxes and Feeders offers ten simple and classic designs for building traditional birdhouses and feeders, plus valuable insights on creating the perfect backyard bird environment. More than just a set of plans, it covers how to attract the right kinds of birds and ensure that they will keep coming back. This book includes complete plans for making basic, practical bird welcoming structures, accompanied by patterns, illustrations and full colour photographs. Each project is perfect for individuals striving to create the most natural bird environment possible. Woodworkers from beginner to expert will find projects appropriate for their skill level. This book provides pages of valuable information for keeping feathered visitors happy. From understanding the proper dimensions for a birdhouse, to choosing the right seed for attracting desired species, to learning how to keep squirrels away, the tips and tricks found here will help guide bird lovers to create a backyard oasis. Readers will get valuable instructions on mounting techniques, types of paint to use and cleaning tips, plus environmental insights and interesting avian trivia. This book stands out from ordinary birdhouse titles with technical detail on subjects like cavity size, proper hole size and the ideal distance from hole to cavity floor.

Genres: Woodwork, Nonfiction

231 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

I'm the author/illustrator of 15 books with more on the way. Here's a link to a review in the New York Times Book Review of MY AWESOME SUMMER BY P. MANTIS (Holiday House). AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prizes named MY AWESOME SUMMER BY P. MANTIS a 2018 finalist for best books of the year in the Children's Science Picture Books category. MY HAPPY YEAR BY E. BLUEBIRD, MY STINKY SUMMER BY S. BUG, and MY TINY LIFE BY RUBY T. HUMMINGBIRD are three other titles in the Nature Diary series. YOU POOP HERE is a simple, humorous potty training book which I authored and illustrated, available also as a board book. BOOM! is a Holiday House I Like to Read Comics book for emerging readers about a dog who’s scared of thunder and his cat friend who’s not.

I wrote and illustrated GOOD NIGHT, BAT! GOOD MORNING, SQUIRREL! and ANNA AND SAMIA: THE TRUE STORY OF SAVING A BLACK RHINO.

To date I have illustrated more than 90 books, including early readers, picture books, eight books in the HarperCollins Let's-Read-And-Find-Out Science series (LIGHT IS ALL AROUND US, ENERGY MAKES THINGS HAPPEN, FORCES MAKE THINGS MOVE, and others), and a number of mass market books. Two chapter books written by my son, Peter, and illustrated by me, are STINKY SPIKE THE PIRATE DOG and STINKY SPIKE AND THE ROYAL RESCUE.

I graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Wesleyan University, where I also played on the squash team. I studied in Rome at the Tyler School of Art my Junior year. I received an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and worked briefly as a graphic designer before becoming a full time illustrator and author.

In addition to children's trade books I also work in editorial, educational and advertising illustration. I illustrate traditionally and digitally, and use a combination of both.

When not illustrating and writing or spending time with the family I like to play tennis, pickleball and garden. Coco, our labradoodle seen in the picture above, is no longer with us but she was an avid runner and digger and the inspiration for a number of my books.

Reviews

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mom wants a bunch of birdhouses, but the last book I bought didn't really have any designs I thought were very interesting, so I grabbed this one—not realising the author was also one of the authors of the other one. That book had nineteen projects, this one has twelve; they have nine in common. The ones missing from this book are mostly the ones requiring the hard-to-find tools I mentioned in my other review.
The new ones are a ``window view birdhouse'', which is a regular birdhouse with a plexiglass wall that you're supposed to hang in front of your window so you can see what's inside (I can't imagine that's good for the birds' nerves), an elaborate marten house with room for sixteen birds, and a scallop-roof bird feeder, which is functionally identical to the traditional bird feeder in both books but has a scalloped roof.
The plans and even pictures for the projects in common with the other book are identical, but the text is a bit more questionable. If you're thinking about getting either of these books, get the other one.