I’ve recently added two new boxes to my house and I thought I’d devote a page to it here as it’s not something I’ve seen done elsewhere. I already have similar boxes installed albeit with slight variations and both had Swift take up residence last year and raise young.
So I’ll start with my eaves as this design will only fit an eave where the roof has an overhang substantial for the width of a box and that no facia has been added as it’s the void under the eves this design utilises.
As you can see from the picture this is the kind of overhang I mention earlier that can be utilised with this type of box and what I make is basically a box with no roof as my eaves become a natural roof for the box.
The pics below show what the finished box looks like, these were made to fit between my joists and angled up enough at the back so that it follows the joist up and has no gaps. The front has a height of around 40mm with a rectangle entrance 65mm by 30mm and an added landing strip too. This can then be offered up until the front of the box buts up and meets the underside of the roof and fixed in place. The nest cup will need to be placed on the wall side as this has the most headroom which in my case is around 150mm once in place.
This is one of my first I trialed with the only difference being the entrance hole is positioned underneath, this was done due to the close proximity of phone lines and as the Swift would dip up and under to avoid them it made life easier for them to acces . A pair took this box mid June 2020 and went on to raise young, so winner winner chicken dinner and looking at it I seriously need to clean my windows 😂😂. A word of advice however when fitting entrance holes on the underside of boxes, the young Swift will crap out the entrance hole when old enough, so position them with thought 😉.
Also these are the same principal only they consist of two nest spaces, one is a standard shoebox design underneath but I reconfigured the front to allow access to the top of the box that then becomes the second nest space under the eaves. This idea came along after previous box fittings and made sense to utilize what would have been redundant space above a box. Again the top right nest gained a new pair last year showing they do work and surprisingly as this box lacked extra width due to the brickwork.
I hope if anyone out there like me that goes down the DIY route finds some of this helpful, I’ve found doing it all yourself has been a challenge but rewarding and observing as they come and go, you will often see little things that can be done or tweaked to further improve your chances of success. I’ll leave you with a few pics of birds in these type nest spaces and the template I work to.
Swifts & Things 