Hiya everyone, I’m very new and learning lots about how I can help wildlife. I have bird feeders out and there are lots of birds that come to them, it’s so good watching them.
I have 2 questions and if anyone could help I would be so grateful:-
1) I want to provide shelter for the birds from the rain and where I’ve moved in to has 6ft fences at the back, could I put 2 pieces of wood in an L shape upside down and fasten it to my fence as a shelter?
2) I have nest boxes, could I put them on the wire fence in front of the trees?
thanks for your help everyone :)
Hi Joanna and welcome to the community forum. Glad you are enjoying watching and feeding your garden birds. With regard to your questions, and the thoughtful fact you would like to help the birds, I would tend not use fences for any form of attaching a shelter or nest-box due to the safety factor where a possible predator could use the fence-line to attack any birds. What I used to use as a more sheltered area for the birds to feed was a pitched roof ground guardian (comes with tent type pegs to secure in place) and then use a piece of heavy duty butyl pond liner cut to shape to cover the roof - we added metal rods to each end to weight the pond liner down in windy conditions or if using a flat roof guardian you could just place a brick or two on top of the rubber liner.. This worked well to keep the food dry on rainy/snowy days and the birds still felt safe even on the ground level as they were inside the mesh and the guardian was close enough to shrubs to exit to. If you can add a nest-box to your tree (use galvanised nails) rather than fence, that would be better and birds would be safer. Birds feathers are quite weather proof as they fluff them out to keep warmth in and they will shake water off much like a dog would (hence the saying water off a ducks back ! ) so nesting/roosting box would be a better idea rather than a shelter where rain could come from any direction.
X-post with Rob