Building my kookaburra nesting box
This entry was posted on 19 Mar 2007, 5:25 AM and is filed under Hobbies.
On Saturday, I spent a few hours making my kookaburra nesting box.
Most birds start nesting in Australia in late July, early August so there's plenty of time after mounting the nesting box to the big tree in the back corner for any would be 'homemakers' to move in and get settled before starting their family.
Kookaburras are very large terrestrial kingfishers native to Australia and New Guinea.
Anybody got a towel? This poor little guy got a bit soaked from a sudden downpour.
Kookaburras are best known for their unmistakable call which is uncannily like loud, echoing human laughter — good-natured, if rather hysterical, merriment in the case of the well-known Laughing Kookaburra and maniacal, almost insane, cackling in the case of the slightly smaller Blue-winged Kookaburra.
Kookaburras are carnivorous. They will eat lizards, snakes, insects, mice and raw meat. The more social birds will accept handouts from humans and will take raw or cooked meat (even if high temperature) from on or near open air barbecues if left unattended.
We know that 'kookas' are present in our area as we have spotted quite a few sitting in various places around our yard and in neighbour's yards so we are hopeful that one of these will find a mate and make this nesting box their new home and we can adopt this little family as our own.
Getting back to the nesting box. As I said last week, my work area is quite untidy...actually, that's a bit of an understatement...it's really a mess with a capital 'M'. The photo below shows just how untidy it is.
You know how it is, every time you use a different tool it's far easier to just chuck it on the workbench instead of placing it back in its rightful place in one of the cupboards.
One day I'll clean up! And I must fix that wretched top drawer that doesn't close properly. Add it to the list!
And...you can't make anything without making a mess right? And that's what happened on Saturday. I ended up with a floor full of offcuts and sawdust...and that can't stay there unfortunately.
I will have to clean that up. Any volunteers? I can pay you by allowing you the privilege of mowing my lawn. That's very generous of me I know but then I'm that type of guy!
The nesting box is 520mm high by 280mm wide with a colourbond corrugated iron roof similar to the roof I placed on the bird feeder last week.
I have cut a 100mm diameter entrance in the front with the centre of the entrance 400mm up from the floor. Holes have been drilled near the top on both sides to give ventilation. The box is mounted on a 3x2 piece of pine for attaching to the tree.
Sunday morning arrived and I still had to sand and paint the nesting box but, as I was going to use an electric sander (hand sanding went down the Nile in the basket with Moses) and the time was only 8 am, I had to wait a while so that the neighbours didn't start complaining that I interrupted their sunday morning sleep-in.
Here's a pic of the unsanded, unpainted nesting box:
A couple of hours later, I sanded and painted and snapped a pic of the finished product.
Here's a pic of the painted nesting box:
Later in the day, my neighbour Jeff across the street came over with his long ladder and assisted me to mount the nesting box in the tree.
By the way, during the last week I've been mixing a lorikeet liquid and pouring it into a ceramic bowl and placing the bowl into the bird feeder I made the previous weekend.
It appears that some birds must have been feeding from it as the bowl was bone dry one morning and most other mornings has been less than half full.
It was quite a task to mount the box in the tree. It was far too heavy for one guy to clamber up the extension ladder and at the same time lift the nesting box so we had to tie rope around the box, throw the rope over a strong branch, literally winch the box up into the best position in the tree, secure the other end of the rope around the garden bench seat to keep the box secured in position while mounting the box to the tree with long self tapping screws.
Here's a couple of pics showing the box attached to the tree trunk in the back corner of the yard:
The suggested minimum height off the ground is 2.5 metres (about 10 feet) and I have this nesting box placed at 4 metres (about 16 feet) off the ground so any prospective 'tenants' should feel safe and secure.
So now we just play the waiting game and hope that a few kookas in the district will want to make this their new home and raise a family in August.
Please send an email to all the kookaburras in your address book advising them of this new rental accommodation.
