| Big City, Little Homestead

Make a squirrel cabin out of a wine crate

Squirrels need winter residences, and they do make their own. What you usually see is a “cottage” made of twigs and leaves high up in the forks of tree branches. However, these don’t strike me as what I would want to live in over winter! So, inspired by what I’d seen at a wildlife rehab, I’ve been installing squirrel cabins at the front and back of my house.

The cabin out back (pictured in other squirrel posts on this blog, namely Gladys!) is there all year round, and has been in various incarnations since 2014. I started doing this out front because one night early in November 2021, a homeless squirrel tried to convert the sparrow house under the porch overhang into a home:

So I took the sparrow condo down and repaired it for next spring, using metal portal protectors so that the same thing wouldn’t happen again.

But as “your wish is my command,” I also went to the SAQ and picked up a wine crate to build them a winter cabin. And ever since, I put it up when it gets cold, and take it down as soon as the babies (if there are babies) move out in spring.

How-to build a squirrel cabin:

The rest of this chart from TrueValue Hardware includes nuthatches, woodpeckers, owls…. Its source data was from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Using old wood to build a birdhouse – in about 45 minutes

You can find many examples of bird houses online, and here I found a decent pattern for a “one board” bird house (seen in the first image below). I had off-cuts of a bunch of old fence boards that I wanted to use, and the measurements worked.

This project shows you how to build a bird house in about 45 minutes (with all the tools), but just like with pancakes, my first version is less than perfect. You’ll learn what to watch out for when starting out with perfectly good-but-used materials. If you have a slightly more meticulous approach, you will end up with a prettier result.

What you’ll need:

a brad nail gun or a hammer
finishing nails to put it together and nail sink (a bigger, stronger nail will do)
two round, smooth nails (not spiral) or else two short deck screws for the door hinge (deck screws are weather-resistant)
another deck screw to close the front (between nesting seasons, it’s your job to clean the birdhouse out – also an interesting and informative project!), and the Robertson driver for it
a drill with a bit for the deck screws, and a spade bit ranging from 1-⅛” to 1-½,” depending on the bird you want to attract,
two spiral nails to fix the birdhouse to the top of a post,
and a post, either a round fence post or a 4×4 deck post
either implanted into the ground, held to /as part of a fence by some support, or anchored in a cement deck block with a wood shim.

Use the chart from this post’s header image (found on the Internet Wayback Machine archive from TrueValue Hardware) to determine the sizes you’ll need depending on species of bird. The box size, the height of the door hole and the diameter of the door influences what kind of bird might take up residence.

You can also buy Bird House Portal Protectors to prevent other animals from pecking or excavating the door; they indicate the diameter of aperture by naming each size after a bird (wren, chickadee, nuthatch, Eastern Bluebird; I chose ‘nuthatch’ for the birdhouses I dedicated to the house sparrows).

The birdhouse I’m making today could, if I lived in a more meadowed neighbourhood, house bluebirds. Instead, I’m looking forward to welcoming a pair of chickadees and also some house sparrows, who already live here.

Chipping sparrow at a bird feeder — A Chipping sparrow at the bottle bird feeder I made

Projects to Attract Wildlife To Your Backyard

This is a very short, curated and edited project list about attracting wildlife, taken from a now-defunct page called 10 Cool Ways To Attract Endless Wildlife To Your Backyard. (In case it resurrects, it came from here: https://www.homemadehomeideas.com/10-cool-ways-to-attract-endless-wildlife-to-your-backyard).

(I chose links from environmental organizations to provide you the details, so you don’t have to slog through the advertisements and plodding prose on your typical blog):

I will star ⭐️ the ones I’d like to do myself.

Build a bug and bee hotel (two versions in this article; this is different than my Mason bee house)
Make a butterfly feeder (⭐️ I did a version of this during 2017’s Painted Lady eruption in Montreal)
Build a bird house — more advanced woodworkers could try a colonial style (⭐️ very ambitious!) for birds that like to house together.
Make a bat house ⭐️
Make a temporary worm hotel with a bottle (video link) or a terrarium; this isn’t an “attraction” project, but a weekend activity so that children can witness what worms actually do!

And if you live anywhere close to water and woodland, you can also look up tutorials on how to attract hummingbirds or frogs to your garden. Don’t overlook this fantastic opportunity; hummingbirds are faithful visitors once they’ve discovered your feeder, coming back year after year, and frogs frankly need all the help they can get.

And finally, make a wine bottle bird feeder, like the one above!

Build an “L” shape out of scrap wood, and drill a hole for the point it’s going to hang from. It should hang from a fixed point, not swinging (i.e. a chain).
Build an “L” shape out of scrap wood, and drill a hole for the point it’s going to hang from. It should hang from a fixed point, not swinging (i.e. a chain).
Use some kind of strapping to hold a bottle in place on the upright part of the “L”; screw the ends of the strap to the back, not the front (looks better).
Using a nail or a screw, fix a dish of some kind – plastic, metal, or a plant-material basket – to the bottom of the “L.”
To let the seed dry out when it rains, drill some drain holes into the plastic or metal dish. I happened to use a cheese grater from IKEA, so that was easy.
If the dish or basket doesn’t have a good lip for perching on, you can also drill another hole in the upright, at the same height as the top of the dish. Make sure the drill bit is the the same diameter as a piece of bamboo or a chopstick. Insert it all the way.
Hang the feeder from a post, or from a screw in the wall of your house (like me! Feeders that are up against our dwellings actually help prevent bird strikes!)
Fill a bottle with bird seed, and put it in the holder upside-down (ICYDK: put your thumb over the mouth of the bottle until it’s in place). Tip the bottle slightly to let some seed out.

Have fun! And enjoy the results.

A Green Driveway

I’m thrilled to let you know that Harrowsmith published an article on this project: Why a Green Driveway is Environmentally Sexy

Here’s a gallery of a project I dreamed about for ages: turning my boring asphalt driveway into a green driveway where plants and moss can grow.

This included creating a rainwater catchment (also known as an infiltration gallery) for my front yard garden. The downspout from my roof used to empty onto the driveway, only, now it empties into an underground set of conduits. This sends much-needed irrigation to my garden. Any rain that overflows the gutters or escapes then percolates into the green driveway, preventing runoff to the street.

One of the benefits of this water-saving measure is that it helps prevent storm surges during big storms. The city sewers get next to no water from this set-up. The more consistent benefit to me, though, is that it cools down the hot and sunny south-western front of my house. This reduces the urban heat island effect by

Not having hardscape absorb the heat of the day,
Retaining moisture for the plants there, and
Cooling the air not only through tree shade, but transpiration from the soil.

Where formerly it was very dry, more plants grow now. And I use less water from the city for watering the yard!

A green driveway project like mine has five stages:

Design and materials procurement,
Excavation,
Creating the rainwater infiltration field,
Building the new driveway, and
Adding the fill and finishing touches.

The following gallery gives a pictorial of its stages of design and installation:

Archive

Make a squirrel cabin out of a wine crate

How-to build a squirrel cabin:

Like this:

Using old wood to build a birdhouse – in about 45 minutes

What you’ll need:

Like this:

Projects to Attract Wildlife To Your Backyard

And finally, make a wine bottle bird feeder, like the one above!

Like this:

A Green Driveway

Like this:

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