Bird Housing: Your Shop Teacher Got it Wrong

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That's why aging architects design earth-covered birdhouses. It isn't that the birds don't appreciate them. They do. But the priority lies with architecture for humans. When you see what a pleasant, healthy wild garden this can be, it won't take a great flight of the imagination to see in your mind's eye the world of the future, in which windows in the hillsides will be the only clue that a city is near. When the first birdhouse of this design went up on Cape Cod, the local papers ran pictures of it as the world's first underground birdhouse. I was delighted by the response because we need so desperately to put most of our ugliness underground. Farms and forests all around the world are giving way to asphalt, concrete and the most wasteful kinds of buildings. If we buried our shopping centers and our parking lots, our factories and our offices, we'd have the beautiful green out-of-doors all around us again. And if we buried our houses, too, and did it the right way, they would be sunny, dry, energy efficient, easy to maintain, long-lasting and safe.*

Materials List

Support post Mulch Topsoil Compost Sod block Twigs and grasses Water bowl Nesting shelf (1" x 10" x 10")

4 Pieces of shelf edging (1" x 2" x 11")
1 2 Decorative blocks (1"x 1" x 1/4")
24 Galvanized 1'' brads
4 Stems
(1-1/2" x 1-1/2" x 24")
4 Fins (3/4" x 5 [or 6"] x 33-1/2") 1 Flagstone (24" x 24")

Malcolm Wells, a Cape Cod architect and illustrator, has over 40 years of experience designing and building environmentally minded bird structures. To order his book Classic Architectural Birdhouses and Feeders, send $9.95 (in MA add 5%; Canada $11 US.) to: MalcolmWells, 673 Satucket Rd., Brewster, MA 02631 or call (508/896-6850).

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