Birdhouse Cleaning Tips To Know Before Putting One In Your Yard

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Adding more birdhouses to your yard is a fun experience, from picking which adorable birdhouse kits are worth buying to watching your feathered friends build their homes for the season. However, as the nestlings you watched grow leave the nest (it may take a few weeks for them to actually leave, and some birds, like Robins, will hatch a second set of eggs), it's time to add a new chore to your list for the week: Cleaning out your birdhouses.

Keeping your birdhouse clean after brood not only encourages more birds to return and nest the next season but provides them a clean, safe space to do so. Birds can carry a variety of diseases and parasites, including mites, which can infiltrate the nest and remain there even after the birds are gone. Then, when another expecting pair comes to build their nest, it can expose the offspring to these lingering mites, which can make survival more difficult. Unchecked birdhouses can also be a great place for rodents to build their homes, which can prevent birds from making their nest there.

There are things to keep in mind once you put a birdhouse up in your yard, whether you purchase a store-bought house or choose to make your own, like this DIY mosaic birdhouse with leftover tiles. This of course includes two tips for cleaning your birdhouse as well as knowing when to clean it.

For the best results, you should clean your birdhouse as soon as you're sure the brood has moved on. It's better to be safe than sorry in this case, waiting longer to make sure the birds aren't using it anymore. Depending on the birds you're dealing with, this timeframe will often fall between summer and autumn. Then, before the nesting season gets started in full swing in spring, you should give your birdhouses another check to make sure no rodents nested there through the winter.

Cleaning your birdhouse is simple. First, remove any leftover nesting material from inside the birdhouse. One tip to make this easier is choosing a birdhouse with a door latch for easier opening, like the SISTERBIRD two-pack birdhouse kit. This allows you to open the entire front portion of the birdhouse for easy access inside. Once you've removed all the nesting material from inside, you can leave it to air out in the sun — or use a solution of one part bleach with nine parts water for a heavy-duty clean.

Another tip that will make cleaning out your birdhouse a breeze is using gloves and wearing a mask. Mites, dust, dirt — these are all things you might encounter in your birdhouse that you don't want to inhale or touch. Using gloves also comes with another handy benefit: protecting your fingers and hands in the instance that a rodent has made a home out of your birdhouse. You can also avoid any unfortunate encounters by looking though the hole or using a DIY spy window to check inside your birdhouse.