Build your own bird box

Written by Charley, Feb 2025

To celebrate National Nest Box Week, last week we came together at the Quaker Meeting House to build 9 bird nest boxes to go up in gardens in and around Salisbury. What a great way to help local wildlife!

Thank you all for coming. Special thanks to superstar volunteers Ridz and Polly

This was the first in a series of 15 events – see Wild Salisbury 2025 for what’s coming up next.

We started indoors with hot drinks, brownies and flapjacks…

After giving ourselves new “nature names” (including Charley Chaffinch, Ridz Redwing and Polly Pinecone) and chatting about how to help local wildlife, we headed out into the fresh air to get building.

People chose which type of nest box to build according to what species they have seen around where they live. The options were:

25mm Entrance Hole – Blue Tit, Coal Tit
32mm Entrance Hole – Great Tit, Nuthatch, House Sparrow
Open Fronted – Robin, Pied Wagtail, Flycatcher

We ended up with 4 x open fronted and 5 x 25mm entrance holes. The 25mm hole is so tiny that we double-, triple-, quadruple-checked this was the right measurement! Blue Tits and Coal Tits will squeeze through this hole, and nothing bigger will be able to get in (including larger predators). Which makes it an ideal home for a tiny bird family!

If you missed this event but would love to provide a home for birds in your garden, see the British Trust for Ornithology’s brilliant nest box guide. You could build your own, or buy one (just make sure the measurements are similar to those in the BTO guidance).

Photo of 6 Great Tit chicks from a previous year. Some of the boxes we made last week could end up with birds nesting this year. Others may sit empty for a year or two, settling into the local surroundings, before birds decide it is good enough. If you are lucky enough to spot a bird nest (in a box or not), you can record it through the BTO’s Nesting Neighbours project. Even out of the breeding season, birds and even small mammals like mice may “roost” in the boxes – sleeping and resting rather than rearing young.

See what other events we’ve got coming up as part of Wild Salisbury 2025 here.