This post is a bit of an addendum to Build a nest box for bluebirds and chickadees. If you want to use this one-board/scrap wood tutorial to actually build the box now and set it up as a roost box for the winter, you can flip it upright in spring to serve its nesting purpose.

In winter, birds keep warm by finding niches in which they can roost, and basically puff up and shiver all night long to stay alive. When the landscape is forested, there are lots of places they can go, but in the city, they have to be opportunists and find these niches wherever familiarity allows.

Birds are familiar with birdhouses (that’s what a nest box is, they’re the same thing, provided it’s functional – a lot of birdhouses are decorative), but they’re not the best configuration for winter roosting. While nesting, the birds brood their eggs and chicks on the floor of the box, with airspace above. Remember, cold air sinks. While roosting, the bird will want a sheltered space where their body heat is protected.

Fortunately, there’s a trick we can do to make a roost out of a nest box: Turn it upside down!

Of course it’s not quite that easy. You have to reconfigure the entry to the space to be at the bottom, add a perch inside, and then winterize it. This gallery of pics will show you how, using my front yard chickadee box:

This project will rarely show you proof that the birds use it, but trust that they will. Maybe I ought to come up with a cam project so we can peek in on them!

If the base of your nest box is recessed and has corner drainage, you’ll have to either put a roof on it (because the base is now the ceiling) or wrap it against the elements using landscape cloth or burlap.

You can also mount the roost box to a tree.

It’s been on my to-do list for a few weeks to build a couple of bird houses with the scrap wood I have leftover from other projects, and so finally I did the job just in time for spring migration.

In fact, by May, it’s almost too late — except that some species breed more than once. Those birds who arrived earlier already have young, but those just arriving are getting ready to make a nest. A ready-made niche is often accepted — and that’s what I’m going to provide!

And so can you. Do it this weekend!

“Using Old Wood To Build A Birdhouse” is a into a new kind of post here called a Project or Portfolio post. I decided it this was a nice way to do it with a picture gallery, and I could centralize all the DIY projects that way. (It’s also been a hugely popular blog post).

Resource: NestWatch’s All About Birdhouses has everything you need to know about different birdhouses and nest boxes for different types of birds, and also how to set them up with a nest camera!

Cornell Lab of ornithology

Update: A necessary amendment to the bird houses

Portal protectors! These metal aperture guards keep other birds and animals from excavating the holes to the nest box, as happened to me late one fall because of a squirrel. I repaired the damaged sparrow row-house the following spring, like so, but also, the sparrows really like the new orientation of the end-cabin, and I’ve had successive families being raised in it:

I applied the same portal protector to the two bird houses I made for the above DIY project, and you can see the pics of the results there, too. You can buy them at this link (non-affiliate, I make no commission).

In 2025, we have the prospect of a fourth year of Chickadees raising a family in the chickadee box. They’re very discreet, until the nestlings get noisy.

We have the confirmed fourth year of noisy House Sparrow nestlings being raised in one unit of the multi-row-birdhouse sheltered above my own front door. They’ve successfully fledged every year!

And we have active House Sparrow nesting activity for the third year of the bird house on the corner of the back deck, which had previously seen at least one year of fledges.

Build your bird houses, naturalize their placement, and wait. The birds will come!

Lastly, come winter, you can turn the nest boxes into roost boxes, to help out any birds needing a place to crash overnight in the bitter cold.