Expert: Julia Booth - 5/9/2008

Question
Hi there, I was wondering what kind of birds nest in what area's (Example: The
wren usually nests in sheds or porches). Also Can you recommend a good bird
website for beginners. Please e-mail me back as soon as possible. Tanks a lot!  
Best Wishes, Kaliona! P.S. What kinds of bird houses do chickadee's or wrens like
the best.

Answer
I have an excellent book called "The Easy Guide to Attracting Nesting Birds: The Complete Birdhouse Book." Donald and Lillian Stokes. It's the bext book I've found as far as explaining what kind of birdhouses to build for which species and how they should be displayed. It even includes instructions for building.

The majority of birds are cavity nesters. Hummingbird build what we call "cup nests" and then you have your ground nesters. All of which are too great in number for me to list here.

http://www.wild-bird-watching.com/Nest.html This is a good website that explains nesting behaviors.

If you are a beginning birdwatcher, I recommend getting yourself an either Audubon or Smithsonian field guide specifically for you geographical area. I have about five of them and I use them all. It's good to have different guides to compare data -because they sometimes vary slightly.

This website provides checklists by geographical location: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/chekbird/

Enature.com has a limited database of species, but does have excellent sound bytes available for almost every animal.