A Better World for Tits - Holiday Engineer Project

As most men, I love tits! That's why I want to work for a better world for all kinds of tits.

Some of you might remember one of my earlier posts, called Engineering made simple: A birdhouse and tits!

As this is one of the last days of my summer vacation, I've finally decided to start working on the birdhouses I've planned to build.

The photo above is from Pexels and not taken by me though.

As a proper husband, I decided to work in our garage. I didn't have much space there and the best place to work on was the two tables (which are a bit in different heights) as I could saw between them. I had to place an another board on the table on left so the board I'm cutting is in correct height.

To avoid issues with cutting boards awry, I drew all the lines to be cut in advance from the straight edge. I know if I'll cut one piece wrong it'll be extremely easy to cut all the remaining pieces wrong too.

I cut all the pieces for one birdhouse at once. The roof pieces were provided by a local who had extra water resistant plywood in stock, so I didn't need to cut them myself.

The water resistant plywood gives extra resistance against rain and thus making the birdhouse safer for the birds in the cold wind and rain of Finland.

One of the important factors in the birdhouse is the size of the opening. The bigger it is the bigger birds can make their nest in the birdhouse. The smaller the opening is, the safer it will be for smaller birds.

I'm using a 28 mm wood drill for this so the opening size will be perfect for smaller tits, which I personally prefer. Small tits are beautiful and completely underappreciated.

This is why this is for all the small tits of the world. You stay strong!

If you want to give extra protection against the rain, you can drill the opening with a small slope. This allows the raindrops to fall out from the birdhouse instead of falling inside.

Assembling the birdhouse would be easier if I had something to attach the pieces on, as it's somewhat difficult to hold two pieces together, hold the screw up and actually screw the pieces together. Some would have preferred nails, but I'm a man.

I want to screw everything.

So I pre-screwed the screws on the wood so they will stand firmly on the wood, allowing me to screw them straight in the wood easier. Not completely straight though, as I'm not actually very good at this.

But good enough it seems.

Before attaching the final piece, it's always important to check no screws (or nails) are poking out into the birdhouse. Any sharp objects are an extra danger to the birds, so I checked carefully everything seems good.

Birds are skillful animals, but they are not always too smart for safety. They might make a nest to a certain death trap and cause all the baby birds to die. This is why you have to be smarter than the bird is.

This was one point I got a bit wrong.. I had measured wrong the bottom piece of the birdhouse.

I want it to be easy to remove, as I'll clean the birds nests every year to avoid issues with poor hygiene of birds. It's always a risk that an unclean nest will spread fleas and illnesses to the birds next year.

Also, I added 4 holes in the bottom to allow any water to fall off from the nest.

But luckily I had extra materials to create a decent sized bottom piece for the birdhouse.

The project was a great success, even though I could have used two different sizes of board to get a more sleek sized birdhouse. However this is perfectly fine.

I was going to make another birdhouse before posting this, but my cordless screwdriver ran out of battery before I finished it, so I'm posting this while waiting it to recharge.

Please read my earlier post about tits _{and birdhouses} for more instructions on birdhouse building.