How I Made A Tree Trunk Bird House

Sometimes a bird house comes into existence practically by itself. Or at least from the help of a woodpecker or two. When my husband had to cut down a dead section of a large tree, I didn’t allow it to go into the burn pile. This tree had several holes in it caused by woodpeckers. I figured that with just a little tweaking I could turn that tree trunk into a bird house!

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I’ve made small log birdhouses before with birch or pine logs. This would be a similar feat – just at a bigger scale. The tree that was cut was pretty close to our fire pit area. Since we sit out there quite a bit, I wanted to keep the tree trunk close. In fact, I had my husband just lean the cut section next to it’s other half. It’s a heavy tree and sits real secure like that.

This was definitely one of my easier projects. All I had to do was fashion a roof and then a perch for each of the six woodpecker holes. The result is a tree trunk bird house that is subtle but with a little touch of whimsy.

Tree Trunk Bird House Idea

The very first thing that my bird house needed was a roof to really make it look like a home. I had my husband do this part since I don’t trust myself handling a power saw – especially over my head. Luckily, my husband loves cutting wood and I love dictating.

I just had him make two angled cuts so that I had a point at the top of the trunk.

It’s a little hard to tell from this picture what the angled cuts look like. I didn’t want it to be the same size angle on each side. Because the holes on the tree are not straight up and down, I wanted the roof to be a little off kilter as well. So, one side has a shorter cut than the other. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my close up picture of the cuts.

Making The Roof

Now that the cuts were made I could finish the rest on my own. Basically, this just meant coming up with roofing material and perches.

I’m amazed at how many times I can exactly what I need from our garage or my craft room stash. For the roof, I found a sheet of thin steel that was leftover from one of my husband’s welding projects. It was actually the perfect size to fit as a roof. I just needed to bend it at the point mark.

SHOP STEEL SHEET

The steel sheet was thin enough to be able to bend but couldn’t be done strictly by hand. To get a nice clean bend, I laid the steel across a sawhorse and topped it with a 2×4. Then, I clamped the 2×4 down and used a hammer to make a nice crease.

At this point it was ready to install onto my bird house. All I did was coat the tree point with E6000 glue. I have had such good luck with this glue, both inside and outside, that I knew it would hold the roof in place. The trickiest part was keeping the metal in place while the glue dried.

SHOP E6000 CRAFT GLUE

I came up with a very non technical way to do this. Once again, I found what I needed in the garage. I used two trailer straps. By hooking the tops of the straps to the top of the roof, I could hold the roof somewhat in place. I only need to add some weight to the other ends of the straps. For this, I simply wrapped a brick around each of the other ends.

Creating The Perches

A bird house doesn’t look complete until it has one or more perches for a bird to land on. In my case, I needed six perches to go under the six holes. Luckily, I found just what I needed in my craft room. I have a collection of old cabinet knobs that ended up being the perfect whimsical solution. The variety of colors and textures that I had provided enough interest. I did paint a couple of my wooden knobs to give the perches more color.

A couple of the knobs already had holes going straight through them. The rest were wooden knobs that I could screw through easily, starting at the outer surface. All of the knobs were screwed directly into the tree. You can’t get easier than that!