Been cruising the YouTube sites, found a chart for gourd size related to bird size, got them dried (cost me 2 yrs with my humidity) got them scrubbed, tried sanding and decided it wasn't important with these 3 gourds, sprayed with chlorine water and allowed to dry. Then, my sister says don't put eyes on decorating them or it scares the birds, and another site says give them a back door exit. Anyone have experience with this? Any stories or thoughts if you have made the birdhouse gourds?

I never managed to grow one big enough. But i do know a little (literally, a little) about birds.
The back door is for feeders, not nesting boxes. For feeders, a back door is often a good idea - and it should be smaller than the front door, so a little shy bird can get away from a large aggressive one. I guess. Actually, on my feeders, everybody tends to be polite in winter when the orderly chickadees set the pace and it's a free-for-all in summer, when the uncouth grackles take over.
For nesting, you need one entrance, of a different size and placement for each kind of bird. The best way to decide which to make is to look what the birds you're hoping to accommodate build for themselves. http://www.amishgourds.com/sto...

It is a combination of interior size of gourd or nest box and the size of the opening. If the opening is too big, you can allow unwanted birds to use the nest box.

I wanted wrens or chickadees to use my new bird house this Spring. The whole diameter was 1 1/8". Small enough to deny entrance to House Sparrows, Cardinals, Starlings, Blue Jays and others. But if I had a hole 1 3/4" wide, all of those birds would come into play.
They are looking for a nesting site. They do not choose a gourd over a wooden or plastic house. They are not capable of realizing the difference in material.

I had 2 House Wren families this year in my new box. I think that the parents raised 4 babies total. The wrens just loved it and we're defending it against other birds!

When I hung gourds, the birds used them.
Unfortunately, those gourds never lasted as long as the wood bird houses.

Sorry to hear that it took so long for them to dry...
At my house, i set them on a rack so the air could circulate... The difficult part was in removing the seeds.

I tried cutting of some them open, removing the seed and pulp, adding beans, and gluing them back together as murakas or rattles... But even that wasn't very long lasting.

Any more... I just leave the gourds as decorations here and there through the garden... for people to ask me... What's that?

Sialis.org will tell you about gourds etc for bluebirds.

My gourds mostly get house wrens. One guy works so hard and almost fills even the biggest gourd with twigs!

A good mature gourd can have a shell over an eighth inch thick. I want to say 1/4 inch but I might be overstating.
Gourds that I leave whole and rolling around the garden for fun can last YEARS.. and one that was cut, painted, and hung and used by birds is still in one piece at least 10 years later.

I have one big one with a nice handle, all dried and rattley.

Yes I can imagine it taking a long time to dry, there, Kat. And they smell funky

I used to keep many gourds in my pecan trees for bluebirds. They are territorial, so they occupy only one about every 100'. I had them spaced all over the little farm and over a few years got a large crowd of birds.

I cut my holes with a 1.25" hole saw on a drill. Then I put a hole in the top for a hangar, fished the insides and seed out with a piece of stiff wire, then drilled 4-6 drain holes 0.25" in the bottom.

Every time I painted one, no birds would even look it over. My solution was to heat a large pot of paraffin wax and submerge the gourds one at a time in the paraffin wax till it stopped bubbling. At that point the water had boiled out, and the paraffin had penetrated through and through the shell. That can be a dangerous job. One time I was lifting a gourd out of the wax, and let it slip and fall back into the pot. Instantly I had a bad kitchen fire, but I had a fire extinguisher about two steps from the stove. I bought a new stove for my wife.

Every winter I pulled the gourds down and cleaned the nests out then reboiled them in paraffin wax. Gourds maintained like that last several years, and the birds love them.

That is a lot of trouble, but it is nature friendly, and each year the birds have a nesting place that is free of diseases.

Funky? Hope the birds don't mind, chuckl. I have goldfinches, both varieties in the winter, and a few others I don't always recognize like the titmice, and then the cardinals, blue jays, woodpeckers, stay all year. Oh, I have the Texas mockingbirds that like to eat all the other birds...I have seen the charts, the ones that say, Carolina Wren 6" gourd, 1 1/8" hole, House wren, 6" gourd 2" hole, etc. Couldn't find my bit to drill the 1 1/8" holes today, so put that on hold.
Feeders are 2 holes, makes sense, I don't get bluebirds here, but my wooden boxes I did make for them. Squirrels will be my biggest concern, but for feeding, I simply throw the grains on the ground in the morning when I go out. It saves cleaning and replacing broken feeders. I do have mourning doves but they make a cone shaped open top nest...my sister grew these gourds, gave me the ones I chose, she has a neighbor who turns them into painted and sketched bowls. She turned hers into vases, she said. I want mine outdoors, chuckl.
Ummm, yes my reading suggested that Carolina wrens are good neighbors for the threatened bluebirds and help protect them. Didn't like painted gourds...even white or just yellow?

I think the problem with paint may be the odor.

I had my gourds and bluebirds at Lindale, TX. I bet they are here (bryan, TX) too, and where you are. I think their range is limited mostly by access to nesting places. I am not familiar with the nesting habits of other birds except those pesky wrens.

A Texas Mockingbird that likes to eat other birds? Kittriana, where did you hear that?
That is totally new to me.

My sister finally had a bluebird nest in her box, had wee tiny babies, she saw a Tx mockingbird fly out and went to check this past Feb end. It had literally torn them apart, shredded pieces of baby bird left. Broke her heart, but Tx mockingbirds are fierce (even if it didn't actually eat them? I wasn't there to verify) She is in Clarksville, Tx and does have the bluebirds, phoebe, scissortails, mockingbirds, wrens...

But baby birds are not part of a Mockingbirds diet. Berries, Arthropods, insects, grubs, spiders, seeds, small nuts all are on the menu.

Perhaps the bird was miss identified?
Not everyone knows how to identify birds correctly.
Growing up on the South Shore of Long Island, my grandparents tried to tell me that every gull that they would see was a Chicken Hawk! Ring billed Gulls, Herring Gulls, and Laughing Gulls were all chicken hawks. English sparrows were " Chippies".

In looking in a bird book, there is no such thing as a Chicken Hawk.
But Mockingbirds are aggressive at nesting time. They readily chase all birds from their territory. They dive bomb cars, mailmen, homeowners, delivery men, people on the street, dogs, cats and just about anything else that gets too close to the nest.
They raise at least two families per year in Texas until it gets too warm.

Unfortunately, I know she knew that one. Being in open pasture she doesn't have squirrels, and 'chicken hawks' simply refers to any hawk on the wing in the area, chuckl. Mockingbirds are intensely aggressive, and they will kill and chase down other birds, apparently this mockingbird didn't like baby chick noises.

I just have one counterpoint. Did anyone ever consider either a Loggerhead or Northern Shrike? They look so much like a Mockingbird that a real amateur bird watcher could easily confuse them! Now shrikes do eat meat as in other fledglings or baby birds.
They were as common as Mockingbirds in SW Florida.

Only an experienced birder could quickly note the differences.

The funky smell is gone after they are all dry.

I think I found a summer squash last year that seemed like it was going to dry like a gourd. I've got a few summer squash in the garage drying now. Will a squash do the same thing as a gourd?

Probably not.
The gourds have a much thicker rind or skin. In a squash, it is much thinner. I don't feel that it is durable as a bird house.

When I use to drive North from SW Florida to SC, I went US-301 and Georgia- 4. I passed many a gourd arrangement hanging from a tall metal structure that looked like an antennae. There would be a dozen, three dozen, 50 gourds hanging up.
There I think the species they were trying to attract was the Purple Martin.

Now, see, shrike doesn't look like a mockingbird to me at all, but no, hers are mockingbirds. She was trying to call a Phoebe a mockingbird, so I told her to listen, and watch the bird on the highline, and it was a Phoebe. She has a lot of mockingbirds tho, and the blue birds nested because of that snowfall we got late Feb...usually her bluebirds return to Mi before nesting, but as the snows were so brutal, the babies had gotten feathers on the wings...I attribute it to timing. I have no clue if there is a way to protect birds from other birds of the same size, tho I do fancy the tornado? baffle for the squirrels....

Kay, did you see the mockingbirds yourself?
You know the difference but they are similar, gray and white birds. If you did not see them and she has confused a Phoebe with a mockingbird, that's it. Can her ID be 100%?

Yes, she saw it close and The Texas Mockingbird is a Texas state bird- she has called that one correctly many times. I will have to check on if Shrikes are even in her area-close to the Oklahoma state line south of IdaBell, Okla. West of Texarkana. Ark 50 miles. Hmmm, says they get more aggressive when lead is in the soil. I noticed I also spot bill shapes...shrikes shouldn't even be in the area if the maps are correct.





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I agree, the Northern shrike would be very unlikely in Texas but the Loggerhead Shrike is a year round resident.