A nest box, also spelled nestbox is a man-made box provided for animals to nest

Nest

A nest is a place of refuge to hold an animal's eggs or provide a place to live or raise offspring. They are usually made of some organic material such as twigs, grass, and leaves; or may simply be a depression in the ground, or a hole in a tree, rock or building...

 in. Nest boxes are most frequently utilized for wild

Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....

 and domesticated

Domestication

Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, in which case they are also called birdhouses, but some mammalian species

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

 may also use them. Birdhouses are the most common types of nest boxes as they are small and easy to take care of while attracting many birds. Birdwatchers often use them to lure birds into their private land for mark and recapture tracking.

Construction

Nest boxes are usually wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

en, though some for birds are made from a mixture of wood and concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

, called woodcrete. Metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

 nest boxes are also marketed, but these are generally unsuitable for outdoor use, as they can overheat easily in sunshine.
Many nest boxes are cuboid

Cuboid

In geometry, a cuboid is a solid figure bounded by six faces, forming a convex polyhedron. There are two competing definitions of a cuboid in mathematical literature...

 and have a sloping roof

Roof

A roof is the covering on the uppermost part of a building. A roof protects the building and its contents from the effects of weather. Structures that require roofs range from a letter box to a cathedral or stadium, dwellings being the most numerous....

, with a hinged top, side or front to provide access for cleaning, bird ringing

Bird ringing

Bird ringing or bird banding is a technique used in the study of wild birds, by attaching a small, individually numbered, metal or plastic tag to their legs or wings, so that various aspects of the bird's life can be studied by the ability to re-find the same individual later...

 or, when used for domesticated species, to give the breeder access to the young. Boxes may either have an entrance hole or be open-fronted. Some nest boxes can be highly decorated and complex, sometimes mimicking human houses or other structures. Nest boxes may also contain nest box camera

Nest box camera

A nest box camera, also known as a bird box camera, is a device for monitoring birds in nest boxes. Many pictures and videos of nesting birds can be watched on Internet sites that broadcast video stream and still images in real time..-Technology:...

s so that use of, and activity within, the box can be monitored.

Birds

Different sizes of nest-box suit different species of birds with very small boxes attracting wren

Wren

The wrens are passerine birds in the mainly New World family Troglodytidae. There are approximately 80 species of true wrens in approximately 20 genera....

s and treecreeper

Treecreeper

The treecreepers are a family, Certhiidae, of small passerine birds, widespread in wooded regions of the Northern Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. The family contains ten species in two genera, Certhia and Salpornis...

s and very large ones attracting duck

Duck

Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...

s and owl

Owl

Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...

s. The maintenance of nest-boxes to remove old nest material and any parasites is important if they are to be successfully re-used.

Blue Tit

Blue Tit

The Blue Tit is a 10.5 to 12 cm long passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common resident breeder throughout temperate and subarctic Europe and western Asia in deciduous or mixed woodlands...

s, Great Tit

Great Tit

The Great Tit is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common species throughout Europe, the Middle East, Central and Northern Asia, and parts of North Africa in any sort of woodland. It is generally resident, and most Great Tits do not migrate except in extremely...

s and Tree Sparrow

Tree Sparrow

The Eurasian Tree Sparrow is a passerine bird in the sparrow family with a rich chestnut crown and nape, and a black patch on each pure white cheek. The sexes are similarly plumaged, and young birds are a duller version of the adult...

s have been shown to prefer woodcrete boxes to wooden. Birds nesting in woodcrete sites had earlier clutches, a shorter incubation period, and more reproductive success, perhaps because the synthetic nests were warmer than their wooden counterparts.

Bats

Bat boxes differ from bird nest-boxes in having a (usually) much smaller opening, often on the underside of the box. Populations of many bat species are becoming threatened because of ecological pressures and the provision of appropriate bat-boxes can help support locally important populations. Bats are a means of natural mosquito and insect control in some parts of the world. A single bat can eat 500 to 1,000 mosquitoes a night as well as other insect pests. Directions for making the open bottom bat houses for small and large colonies, as well as locations to purchase them are available on the internet. Bat houses are an ecologically friendly way of controlling mosquitoes as pesticides mostly kill the mosquitoes' predators rather than mosquitoes. Australian Bat Box projects have been running for over 12 years in particular at the Organ Pipes National Park

Organ Pipes National Park

The Organ Pipes National Park , a protected area, is located in Victoria, Australia. It was established with the focus on conservation of the native flora and fauna, and preservation of the geological features in the Jackson Creek, a part of the Maribyrnong valley, north-west of Melbourne...

. Currently there are 42 roost boxes using the "Stebbings Design" which have peaked at 280 bats roosting in them. The biggest problem with roosting boxes of any kind is the ongoing maintenance; problems include boxes falling down, wood deteriorating and pest such as ants, the occasional rat, possums and spiders.

Other creatures

Nest boxes are marketed not only for bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s and bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

s, but also for butterflies and other mammals, especially arboreal ones such as squirrel

Squirrel

Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...

s and opossums. Depending on the animal, these boxes are used for roosting, breeding, or both or, as in the case with butterflies, hibernation

Hibernation

Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate...

. Wasp

Wasp

The term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their...

s may build their nests inside a nest box.

External links

• Nest box page from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
  Bird Notes and News was first published in April 1903.The title changed to 'Bird Notes' in 1947. In the 1950s, there were four copies per year . Each volume covered two years, spread over three calendar years...
  
  .
• Nest box plans: bluebirds, purple martins and others.
• How to build a nest box.
• Birds Australia Information Sheet 5: Nestboxes for Natives PDF download
• Rob McDonald, "Birdhouses," Southern Spaces, 12 July 2006. http://southernspaces.org/2006/birdhouses