Build Your Own Birdhouse for Your Backyard Birding Hobby

Carter, a 4th-grade student, while Distance Learning and during quarantine, found ways to continue his love for learning through his love for birds/birdwatching.

Watching this video reminds us that even with the current pandemic, we can find ways to appreciate the nature that surrounds us.

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Throughout 2020, social distancing considerably limited our options for entertainment and hobbies. Sheltering-in-place has definitely expanded our appreciation for nature and creative pastimes. It’s no surprise that many people have turned to backyard birding as a free way to relax, get fresh air, and add enjoyment to their days.

Backyard birding is an activity suitable for people of all ages and physical abilities. It is also completely free and can be done anywhere. All you need to do is go outside with the intention of watching the birds. You don’t even need a backyard — a simple window bird feeder is a great way to attract birds into view for you to enjoy.  

With some time, a guide book, and a method of tracking, such as a simple notebook, you can get acquainted with the unique characteristics and habits of your local wildlife all year round. 

Birdwatching 101: Beginning Your Backyard Birding Adventure

Before you begin your new adventures in backyard birdwatching, it’s important to remember that birdwatching is wildlife appreciation. While this hobby should be fun, it is even more important that it is a pastime based on the preservation of the species. Bird watching should never cause harm or stress to the birds, even in your own backyard. Structures such as decks, gazebos, and porches offer you a perch to observe without disrupting the birds. 

Staying still and quiet will also keep the birds calm and relaxed, making it more likely that they will get close to you. Another technique for blending in is to wear camouflage or muted colors — never white — while you are birding. 

Birders should always give back more than they take and never leave traces of their presence where they are birdwatching. Reviewing the American Birding Association Code of Ethics is a great place to learn more.  

Use a Field Guide to Identify Your New Feathered Friends

Part of the fun and excitement of birding is identifying the birds you are watching. Ornithology, the study of birds, involves observing characteristics of the bird as well as the habitat in order to identify them.

Depending on where you live, you may see up to 200 species of birds in your back yard. Keeping track of what bird you see and when you see it will help you be more in tune with nature and the world around you. 

A field guide helps you identify the birds in your back yard. You can use a book that is custom written for the area you live in, with birds and details specific to your region, or use an app. An app may provide helpful extra features such as AI recognitions from a photograph of the bird, samples of the bird’s calls and songs, and records of sightings from other watchers in your area. Audubon.org, Sibleyguides.com, and Merlin.allaboutbirds.org are popular online field guide apps that have a multitude of resources for learning about bird behavior, habitat, and conservation all in one place. 

Keep Records of The Birds You Are Watching

Once you identify the bird, it’s important to take notes. By noting the birds you see, when you see them, and their behaviors, you can begin to anticipate migrations or other patterns. Some serious birders keep a list of the birds they have identified over their entire lifetime. 

Spotting a bird can happen at any time, so be ready to record what you see. The more birding you do, the more you’ll become tuned in to your surroundings. Simply by practicing birdwatching, you may begin to see things you never noticed before. 

The two challenges of birding are: staying patient and quiet enough to see the bird and properly identifying the species. Because of this, birdwatching is a long game that requires time, concentration, and mindfulness. 

Birdwatching is not competitive — there is no race to acquire the biggest list of birds. The fun of getting to know your feathered friends is noticing how they are behaving or singing, how that changes over the seasons, and when they come and go from your backyard.

Gearing Up for Birdwatching 

We have already established that you do not need any special gear for a satisfying adventure in birding. But it is much more fun when you can see the action up close with binoculars. 

Binoculars are easy to bring along with you and give you an up-close and personal look at the birds you’re searching for. Binoculars help you enjoy the beauty of nature while keeping your distance and letting it do its thing. 

Like anything else, binoculars range in price and function. The power, field of view, and focus will vary depending on the quality of the binoculars. It’s important that the binoculars are comfortable, easy to hold onto, and that they fit the user’s needs in every way. It’s helpful if you can test them out before buying them. The Audubon Binocular Guide is a great resource for selecting the perfect pair of binoculars. 

How to Attract More Birds into Your Backyard 

One of the best ways to attract native birds to your backyard is to have lots of local native plants and insects available. It makes sense that birds would feel more at home and drawn to the natural habitat they were intended to thrive in. 

Installing features like birdbaths, bird feeders, and birdhouses are also great for attracting local birds into your backyard. Be aware of the birds in your area before you choose the style of birdhouse and type of birdseed you’re going to use, though. These treats for your neighborhood flocks are not one-size-fits-all — choose the appropriate types for the birds you want to attract. 

A specialty garden or nature supply store will offer the appropriate supplies and may have higher quality products than a big-box retailer. Be sure to research how high up you should mount the feeders and houses. Other mounting details to consider: which direction to face and nearby wildlife to avoid

Birdwatching from Home If You Don’t Have a Back Yard

If you don’t have a yard, no problem! You can create a sanctuary from your apartment window that’s appealing for birds to visit. In fact, the higher up you are, the more likely you are to spot migrations of birds of prey like eagles, falcons, and hawks as they pass over your city. 

If you are a little closer to the ground, installing a window feeder or a bird feeder on your balcony could make a pleasant pitstop for the birds in your neighborhood.

How to Build Your Own Birdhouse

You could buy a birdhouse, of course, but building one for yourself isn’t just rewarding — it’s also fun! You can customize it for your space and for your visitors. 

The first things you will want to assess are the type of birds you’re making a house for and where you want to install the birdhouse. The type of bird you are housing will determine the style of the house and dictate where you can install it. How large the house is, how big the holes are for entering the house, the depth and height of it, and the material it’s made from are all very important things to consider in order to attract the right bird. 

Once you know this information, you can choose the most appropriate place to mount, such as hanging or fixed from a pole or tree. Be sure to consider how the elements will impact the placement of the birdhouse.

Choosing a Free DIY Bird House Plan

If you know the type of bird you want to attract and what style of house you need to build, all that’s left to do is decide what you want to build it out of and how elaborate you want it to be.

You can build a fine birdhouse out of recycled materials, like a shoe tree feeder or a teacup, and have a unique feature in your backyard oasis. This is a fantastic activity to do with the kids — upcycling old items and creating creature homes is a quality afternoon together filled with lessons that will last a lifetime.

Here is a list of 29 free DIY birdhouse blueprints from quirky to quick-up that gives you a great start for creating the birdhouse of your dreams from scratch for a personalized bird town in your own back yard.  

Birdwatching is a Hobby for a Lifetime of Enjoying Nature

Learning about the world around you is something you do throughout your entire life. Slowing down and noticing the natural world should be a daily practice. Birdwatching can be enjoyed anywhere, at any time — you don’t even have to go outside. It’s a free hobby that anyone can take part in. Stay safe, de-stress, and learn more about your ecosystem at home with an adventure in birding today. 

Originally posted on https://porch.com/advice/build-your-own-birdhouse-for-your-backyard-birding-hobby

Hermann Samano

Creating and Inspiring Meaningful Change

Why would migratory birds be attracted to a windmill farm of metallic propellers? Wind farms do not offer any prey to these large predators, neither can they nest there. While several environmentalists and those supporting green energy, like myself would support wind farms, it would take the experts of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory (SFBBO) to point out how these farms end up harming several high soaring raptors like hawks and eagles when not properly situated. 

Source: https://windmillskill.com/blog/windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-previously-thought

If you have had a chance to visit the Google campus in Mountain View, CA, you may notice that Google has designed its landscaping to be native bird-friendly. They also have feral cat feeding stations around the campus! That is very nature/animal-friendly, right? But, when we gained insights from the SFBBO experts that feral cats eat native birds, we realized that the current Google campus design has conflicting elements that defeat the fundamental idea of peacefully coexisting habitat design.

Marshmallow Minds is excited to announce its collaboration with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory (SFBBO) in 2020. Through this partnership, Marshmallow Minds is developing a new set of real-world design inspired STE(A)M curriculum around the environment, bird conservation, and watershed stewardship.

It was an awesome day at SFBBO - a unique design session where we saw professionals come up with ideas and build prototypes to show how birds can coexist with humans in human neighborhoods and office campuses or transform their own offices into living trees. There are endless possibilities when one applies design thinking to solve these existential problems for balancing the needs of humans and birds.

In the modern world, coexisting peacefully with nature is becoming a tough call and a hard problem to solve. It needs all the perspectives of various stakeholders well identified. Empathy is very critical. The puzzle of what attracts the birds to the wind farm creates an aha moment when you start to think like a bird. The raptors would love to fly in the high winds corridors to save their energy and fly with the wind, but when they come close to the wind farm these birds have life-threatening consequences. 

We all have driven through the wind farms of the Altamont pass. It causes the death of thousands of protected species like the golden eagle. One windfarm company has even ceased operations. “The reduction of avian impacts” was the primary reason for the company to discontinue its Altamont operations. 

In one of the design-based STE(A)M lessons, students will be given insights so they may empathize with different types of birds such as the migratory birds, breeding birds, etc,  use scientific data, apply their creativity and work on designing windmills that are bird-friendly. We introduce these hard problems and ask them, “Now that you have this new knowledge, how are you going to change the world?”. What can be more inspiring to our nonprofit whose mission is to focus on building children’s growth mindset, innovative real-world problem-solving skills, and creative confidence? 

The year 2019 was a breakthrough year for Marshmallow Minds creating more meaning by partnering with some of the veterans among nonprofits who have created a huge impact in the community through their mission. While Marshmallow Minds was granted the  501(c)(3) status, we have established partnerships with the Family Giving Tree and the SFBBO. We had our first fundraiser in Dec of 2019 which helped us raise over $30K in a single night and gave us a chance to get reinforcement about our mission through some of the innovators and design thinkers in the industry, education and nonprofit world. 

Two years back we were writing to you in our blog, “Marching Forth”, about how we had created an impact by growing seven times in the number of children we were teaching through our in-school programs and how we were looking to create a unique impact in our partner schools. Today, with the strong partnership of other empathic organizations, we are able to create unique design-based real-world problem-solving STE(A)M  challenges for our students and bring our program to more partner schools including Title 1 schools. Through our in-school programs, we are hoping to impact 4000+ students this year. We sincerely believe that students in our partner schools will become empathetic citizens of the future who can extend themselves to bring meaningful change wherever they go.  

(Posting by Anand Vaidyanathan, Board of Directors, Marshmallow Minds)

Ideation @ Marshmallow Minds

Summer Camp 2019

Designing a summer camp experience is hard but enjoyable and requires lots of work. Here at Marshmallow Minds, we have designed a way to brainstorm ideas and then convert the ideas into a lesson plan that is enjoyable for all ages.

Unity in Diversity

One of the most effective ways to start is by having a brainstorming session with a group of people of different backgrounds. Having different backgrounds is important because each one of them was raised differently and will thus have different views and ideas about a given topic thus making the session a more enriching experience.

Marshmallow Minds Ideation Group included a diverse group of experts from different fields who share a common interest in early education:

Mrs. Anshul Agarwal, Founder of Raptor Minds

Mrs. Staci Yee, an elementary school teacher

Mr. Scott Buchholz, Google

Dr. Sreekanth Ramakrishnan, IBM

Mrs. Vrishali Modi, PTA leader/Real-Estate Agent

Board of Directors, Marshmallow Minds

Stay On Topic

You should always give a topic for brainstorming. Giving a topic helps to keep your ideas inside a certain boundary and helps you to stay focused. Our ideation topic was, “How might we make summer camp a unique, multi-activity(STEAM +Creative writing + Mindfulness), blended, fun, and holistic learning experience?”

Go For Volume

When you are brainstorming in a group, it is important to follow the rules of brainstorming. If everyone in the group is mindful of the rules, you will be surprised how effective and efficient your team can be in generating lots of ideas in a short amount of time!

In 20 minutes, we generated close to 60 ideas! That was a successful brainstorming session! Go team!

Zoom Out! Grouping and Voting

After you have generated many ideas, you have to group these ideas into different categories. You can come up with broad and general topics before narrowing down. You can also try to identify a common theme between all the ideas. Once the ideas are grouped, everyone gets to vote for two to three of their favorite ideas. From our grouping and voting exercise, our favorite common theme/connecting topic ended up being Around the World.

Focus on Human Values

At Marshmallow Minds, the heart of every STEAM lesson is an empathy based real-world story. We live in a connected world.  We strongly believe that all children have the potential to become the heroes of their story when they connect with the world from their heart through empathy and apply their mind creatively, to solve challenges.  By combining our ideas, we identified an empathy element for the STEAM projects. We also broke down our projects into design based and project based to give children a holistic learning experience.

Zoom In! Crafting Clarity

         After zooming out and identifying the broad theme, Around the World, our final task was to zoom in and breakdown the details of the summer camp experience. We came up with the idea of splitting the broad idea, Around the World, into the six main continents. In each of these continents, we identified an iconic man-made landmark and a natural (an animal/plant) rich habitat. We then researched for an engineering focused design thinking based lesson for each of the landmarks and an artistic focused design thinking lesson for each of the flora and fauna habitats.

Radical Collaboration

Once we gained clarity on the topics, our camp faculties came together to design a blended curriculum for STEAM, Creative Writing and Mindfulness Yoga.  Every challenge for the summer camp has been designed to give the students an opportunity to empathize, explore and engineer creative solutions. Fun is the easiest way of changing people’s behavior for the better and we have mindfully incorporated fun throughout our camp experience.

(Posting by Ashwin Senthilvasan, student volunteer)

Liberating Ideas

Marshmallow Minds was founded and incorporated on March 4th, 2016 with a mission to inspire innovation through Design Thinking and STE(A)M education and build Creative Confidence in young minds between grades K-8 of all abilities. At the start, neither the process of getting there, nor the outcome was clear. But the need for a better early education experience was clear. Since 2016, Marshmallow Minds has delivered quality Design Thinking and STE(A)M programs to thousands of students in public schools in Santa Clara County. As we complete 3 years, we would like to celebrate all the liberating ideas that helped in the transformation of the organization!

I asked myself every single day,  “How are you feeling about going to work today? Are you excited at the prospect of solving the customer problems that you can hardly empathize with?”. Although I didn’t get great responses, I didn’t see any other alternatives. So, I started to fall in love with technologies and solutions.

In 2005, I hesitantly joined Intuit, a financial software company, with little clue on what this company does. Soon, I was exposed to tools that enabled me to get out behind my desk and talk to customers which soon unlocked new ideas and helped me see problems in a new light. I participated in many ideation sessions with our customers and partners. I was able to shadow our customers and learn how their daily life is, what tools they use and the problems they face. Soon I fell in love with their problems.

The design for delight (Intuit's take on Design Thinking that involves Empathy, Go Broad to Go Narrow and Rapid Experiments) and Lean startup methodologies (Build — Measure — Learn) provided guidance, clear structure, and enabled freedom to bring my ideas to life quickly.

A few years later, I started volunteering as part of the project cornerstone program at my son’s elementary school. As part of the project cornerstone program, I read specially selected books and lead activities that help teach young kids to develop skills to handle physical, verbal, relational and digital bullying and to stand up for others in need. I developed a passion for teaching and learned to empathize with others through this process. I soon realized that we are headed into a world where kids are being a container of mere knowledge rather than being someone who can be a creative designer of the future. Making these young kids learn the allegedly ‘one correct answer’ by heart by following a knowledge-driven curriculum through a ‘one size fits all’ teaching approach’, leads to sucking the creativity out of them.

Recently, I was offered an opportunity to be part of Marshmallow Minds to make a small dent through sharing the design thinking experiences I have been exposed to at work in order to benefit students of all abilities, educators, and parents. I also hope to apply my learnings from this experience back to the corporate world. As a Board Of Director at Marshmallow Minds, I am excited to bridge my passion and my profession and promote and preach the benefits of design thinking and build creative confidence in young minds.

(Posting by Nirmala Ranganathan, Board of Directors, Marshmallow Minds)

Marching Forth!

Marshmallow Minds was incorporated on March 4th, 2016. We believe it is a sign that guides us to march forth in our endeavors! On March 4th, 2018, I would like to share my experiences as the Secretary, Board of Directors at Marshmallow Minds and celebrate the impact we have been privileged to create in the 2017-18 academic year. Thank you, Harini, our founder, for inviting me to join the team to serve our community to which we are committed to cultivating a love of learning through exploration and empathy.

Our second academic year at Murdock-Portal Elementary School(Cupertino Union School District) has evolved the “In School” program into covering over 350 kids from kindergartners to 3rd graders. This is a 7X increase in the number of kids benefitting from our In-School program from the previous academic year. Our instructors and coaches have spent over 200 hours imparting design thinking and STEM education, which is a twenty-fold increase over the 2016-17 academic year. The feedback we have received from parents and teachers, about the positive experience kids confidently share with them has humbled us and has reinforced our belief that empathic exploration and learning inspires creative confidence.

Our kids have dreamed, explored, researched, and created other solar systems. They also understood the nuances of the genetic impact on the vision and muscles of special kids who need more care from the community. Our kids empathized with the needs of these special kids and created ways to help kids with low muscle tone enjoy recess in school. They re-created a stargazing party for kids who suffered from night blindness and could not enjoy the beauty of the night sky. They had fun creating these models of the world from their empathic point of view and collaborated in coming up with these alternate visions of our world. The impact these empathic kids will create when they are leaders promises to be truly unprecedented.

Marshmallow Minds hired its first employee and we also scaled our Board, to enable filing for the 501(3)(c) status which we would be doing in the near future, with the sustained support from our community. We enriched our program to include new design challenges which have helped us uncover new insights in empathy-based design. We conducted parent education nights where parents had fun designing roller coasters for the Golden State Warriors and NASA Astronauts. Marshmallow Minds is looking into expanding the program to kids who are being homeschooled, through a partnership with Lumen Learning Center. Our professional development program at the center for their trainers was well received by Lumen’s staff.

The Marshmallow Minds team is growing and building our social presence to share exciting experiences with our community, educators, and partners. We will be unveiling more programs in schools and in the community with your support. We look forward to further enriching our experiences and incorporating fun design challenges, that help our young students understand and explore the world not just from their eyes, but from the others, they share this planet with. As a Board Member, I am having fun creating meaningful change in education, society, and increasing the empathic quotient in the community while dreaming of s’more experiences here at Marshmallow Minds!

(Posting by Anand Vaidyanathan, Board of Directors, Marshmallow Minds)