Q: Where can I get plans to make a birdhouse for pileated woodpeckers?

A: What a fabulous question. My family has built a few birdhouses, also known as nesting boxes, for our yard, and it's amazing to see what happens when you put one up.

We used a few books for our projects, mainly Everything You Need to Know About Birding & Backyard Bird Attraction and Living with Wildlife: Create Wildlife Habitat No Matter Where You Live.

Doing a simple search online, I found an excellent resource from the Baltimore Bird Club: Homes for Birds. This covers the dimensions of the nesting box you should make depending on what kind of bird you want to build for, plus other important issues like how to design and place the nesting box for optimum protection from predators. Another source for dimensions is Wild Birds Forever. Both of these Web pages offer dimensions for pileated woodpeckers. You'll find more Web sites that offer this kind of information if you search.

It's important for people who want to attract birds to their yards using birdhouses to realize that the pretty birdhouses you see in stores most often don't work. First, they were designed for decorative purposes -- and many such birdhouses come with stickers or labels that say so. Second, most birds have specific requirements when they're looking for a place to call home, and storebought birdhouses may not fit the requirements. (When buying a birdhouse or nesting box, your best bet is to get it from a bird- or nature-oriented store, and make sure the nesting box is labeled as having been designed for 1 to 3 specific birds.)

I'd also say it's important to keep an open mind when you put up your nesting box. Our first box was built for an American kestrel that visits our yard every winter; however, he never took interest in the box. A few starlings settled in for a short while, but now the box houses a screech owl. (The nesting box dimensions were appropriate for both American kestrels and screech owls.) Another box we put up was meant for house sparrows in the area, but a red-bellied woodpecker remodeled it with his beak so the opening hole was large enough for him to fit through! He continues to remodel the nesting box.

Keep in mind that some bird species just don't take up residence in nesting boxes, preferring to build their own nests.

Pileated woodpeckers may or may not use nesting boxes. They aren't shown to be a nesting-box species in my Audubon field guide, but apparently, if you pack the nesting box full of sawdust when you put it up, you just might have a chance of attracting a pileated woodpecker.

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