Creature Comfort: Helping Animals Survive Winter

Put Up Roost Boxes

For many small animals, finding a safe, warm place to sleep is even more precious than getting enough calories. A black-capped chickadee, like the one shown here, can remember more than 1,000 sites where it cached food during the summer. But to find a snug bird bedroom for the night, it must create holes in rotting or soft wood, or find ready-made shelter in rotten tree trunks, knotholes or abandoned woodpecker nests. But you can help passerines (perching birds) by adding roost boxes. These are similar to birdhouses, but with a few key differences.

• Birdhouses have entrance holes near the top, whereas roost boxes have entrance holes near the bottom to prevent rising heat loss.
• Well-designed birdhouses and roost boxes are secure, with latched doors and predator guards over the entrance holes, but roost boxes have fewer ventilation and drainage holes.
• Well-designed birdhouses are compact with open space inside for nest-building whereas roost boxes are considerably larger with interior perches. A good roost box can accommodate lots of birds without the risk of smothering.
• Birdhouses can have relatively thin walls whereas roost boxes have thicker, insulated walls. The interior walls of a good roost box are either scored or covered with bird-safe mesh to allow for clinging and climbing.

You can convert a birdhouse into a roost box with some modifications, you can also build one from scratch or buy them ready-made. Add a layer of wood chips or shavings to the bottom for extra insulation.

Learn to how to make a bird feeder wreath with seed heads and grapevine

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