Birds, Mammals and Wildlife Gardening – houses as bird resources

The eaves of a house may sound an unlikely resource for birds but in fact, where a roof projects beyond the wall it supports, a sheltered place is created, which may be used by many creatures and which you can exploit to encourage birds to enter your garden.

Insects and other invertebrates often hibernate in eaves or similar nooks and crannies and these provide food for many bird species, so don’t be too keen to clean up in this area as you could be removing a valuable winter food source. In addition, house martins build their mud homes in eaves – a habit you can encourage them by putting up artificial nests. Starlings and house sparrows may also take up residence in nest boxes in the eaves and bat boxes can also be hung up here and may be used as summer roosts. Bear in mind that sparrows are quite aggressive nesters and often harass other birds. To avoid problems, don’t place nest boxes for sparrows near house martin nests as the sparrows can sometimes force the martins to abandon their young.

If you don’t have eaves, or if you live on a lower floor, you can always put up next boxes with a large overhanging roof area to give the illusion of eaves. Consider leaning some old wood against your garden shed to create a small, shady, sheltered area, which will appeal to birds and bats. As long as you don’t move the wood around, this will become a wonderful resource for all garden wildlife.

Birds, mammals and wildlife gardening photograph eaves by antmoose, used under a creative commons attribution licence

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