House sparrows broke into my garage.  Cute, no big deal, I thought.  Well it turns out house swallows enjoy pecking out the aged support beams for the roof.  They left a mountain of feces below the spot, just in case I hadn’t noticed their handiwork.

In early Spring, after checking to make sure there were no eggs in nests, we evicted the swallows and boarded them out.  My husband went about the duty of constructing a birdhouse, a triplex birdhouse actually, for the swallows to relocate.  He used old tongue & groove floor boards and some scraps from a recent project, and started building it in our garage.

Triplex Birdhouse

Open Triplex Birdhouse Made From Reclaimed Wood

Meanwhile, the sparrows got organized and managed to bend back some metal trim along the outside of the roof of the garage.  They began pecking away at the cement and cinder blocks, making a nearly bird-sized entry into the garage!  Hubby was racing the clock trying to finish the birdhouse before a second invasion took over!

Within 4 hours two of the three “homes” in the triplex were happily occupied.  The birds are in and out all times per day, dragging fluff and grass in to make nests, then redecorating and tossing it all out on the ground (these things are little pigs apparently) every few days.

The third home in the triplex is yet to be occupied.  I’ve started theorizing about why this third unit is so undervalued in the bird marketplace.  Is it because it faces the weather or the sun more than the other two?  Is it because the side with that unit is elevated with 2 shims?  If you have advanced bird knowledge and can enlighten me, please do!

Alyssa works in multiple MOMs locations.

Broken Egg