| I wanted to build a first-class home. Small enough to be cozy, but big enough to raise a family. I needed an ideal location, near a wooded area, with a natural supermarket nearby. And the design should be simple, crafted entirely out of wood. While I was worried about the cost, I needn't have been. I finished building mine for about $5 in materials in an afternoon. Soon, I hope, my new home will host a family of pygmy nuthatches, tiny songbirds with slate gray wings and a high-pitched call reminiscent of squeezing a rubber ducky. Humans are known for destroying the habitat of our wild neighbors. But we can excel at creating it. My new birdhouse is just one example. After decades studying their avian subjects, ornithologists have designed structures catering to the needs of hundreds of species, ranging from box homes for barn owls to simple baskets for mourning doves tucked into tree branches. Birds, as you might have heard, are in trouble. In North America, they have seen a staggering loss of 3 billion breeding adults, or nearly 30 percent of the population, over the last half-century, according to eBird, a crowdsourced database of bird observations managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Humans have stripped the landscape of large, dead trees where cavity-nesting birds make their homes. That's left many birds homeless in habitats otherwise suitable for them. "Nest boxes are especially important in habitat where lots of trees are missing," says Jack Dumbacher, curator of ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences. "Most urban and suburban areas could definitely use them." While finding shelter is not birds' only challenge — pesticides, introduced predators, habitat loss and glass collisions rank highly — more and better homes can slow losses and help declining populations rebound. But things can go wrong. Nest boxes and structures designed poorly can entice predators, overheat baby birds or encourage overcrowding. Here's a guide to creating first-class bird accommodations. What is a nest box? Nest boxes or birdhouses re-create habitats provided by cavities in dead trees for nesting, roosting and perching. Hundreds of other bird species that don't nest in cavities can still use structures of some kind, from shelves mounted on the side of your house to platforms raised hundreds of feet up for birds of prey. Why do we need these structures? The poster child for the birdhouse success are Eastern bluebirds, a species similar to robins except with blue plumage and rusty-colored throats. By the mid-20th century, populations of this songbird were on the decline across the country, crowded out by aggressive introduced species. But campaigns to build nest boxes in the 1960s, often designed to deter the larger European starling with slightly smaller openings, eased this competition. Ever since, Eastern bluebird numbers have been recovering. Why can't I just throw up any old box? Mimicking natural habitats — tree tops or hollows that can take more than a century to develop — is not easy. Even minute differences — as little as one-eight of an inch in the width of the entrance hole, less than the thickness of two quarters — can spell the difference between excluding one species and welcoming another. Click on the button below to read how I built my avian real estate empire with the help of NestWatch, and how you can too. Write me with your questions at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. | 
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