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Month: January 2026

Categories
Bird Guides

Do Birds Use Birdhouses in Winter?

When fall arrives and cold weather descends, we often think it’s time to put the nest box away. If we leave them standing, we assume they will stay vacant throughout the winter until the following breeding season.

A birdhouse secured to a thick tree trunk, covered in snow, with snowy covered trees in the background.
Image by Pamela Ross via Flickr.

You may be surprised to learn that your birdhouse can be a source of safety and warmth for local songbirds during cold winter nights. So if you’ve been debating what to do with your nest box, you may want to leave it standing. That said, there are a few things you’ll want to do to best prepare it for winter roosting. 

Yes, Birds use Bird Houses in the Winter

It’s a common belief among backyard birders that birdhouses won’t be used during the winter months. Some people block the entrance to their birdhouse or store it away to ensure other critters don’t move in.

But if you leave it standing, you may attract some birds to roost in it during the night. There are a few key species that commonly use birdhouses or cavity nests in the winter. These include chickadees, titmice, bluebirds, woodpeckers, wrens, and even screech owls.

A cavity nest or nest box provides shelter from the wind, snow, or rain, and can help small birds survive the cold nights. There may even be several birds in one nest that all roost together to stay warm. Some people believe this only occurs during extreme cold fronts or harsh weather, but many nest box owners have personally observed birds roosting in their nest box regularly, even on mild winter days.

Two green birdhouses covered in snow, with a woodpecker perched outside one of them.
Image by Richard Vallaincourt via Flickr.

Most of the time, you’ll want to prepare your nest box in the fall for roosting, as some adjustments will make it even more appealing and safe for your local birds. But if you’re reading this in the middle of winter, you can still make the following adjustments now to encourage birds to roost in your nest box.

Preparing your Nest Box for Winter

Some people report leaving their nest box as is and still having winter visitors. You can certainly try this method, but it’s strongly encouraged to at least clean out the old nesting material. Once you clean it out, you can replace that material with straw, wood shavings, or even dried grass.

People who have nest box cameras have anecdotally observed that when nest material was removed (and not replaced), birds were less likely to roost in it during the night. They had greater success when there was old nesting material, but the problem with that is you don’t want there to be mites or bacteria in your birdhouse from the old nest.

So, it’s best to remove it and replace it with some fresh material that the birds can fluff up and use for warmth. This is especially true for chickadees and bluebirds, but it is unnecessary for birds like woodpeckers.

The inside of a nest box with wood shavings and a roosting male bluebird. The head of a female bluebird is poking in through the nest box entrance.
Wood shavings have been put inside this Nest Box Live birdhouse that has bluebirds roosting inside.

To transform your nest box into a proper roost house, follow these steps:

1. Install removable roost perches

For perching birds, such as chickadees and titmice, you can install perches for them to roost on. Using thin dowels, screw in a few staggered perches at different levels away from the entrance hole. This allows multiple birds to roost in the nest and provides them with a more comfortable place to sleep. Come springtime, you can remove the dowel perches so that it is a normal nest box again. (Roosting perches are not necessary for bluebirds or woodpeckers.)

2. Cover air-ventilation holes

Many nest boxes have ventilation holes to help keep the nesting area cool and dry during the breeding season. However, in the winter, these ventilation holes can create a cold draft. You can cover these holes with tape, removable foam weatherstripping, or plug them with rags or cotton. If you do this, make sure to remove the coverings in early spring.

3. Roughen the walls or install hardware cloth

You can make your winter birdhouse more appealing to woodpeckers by providing them with something to cling to. You can roughen the smooth walls with a high-grit sandpaper, score them with a sharp knife, or screw in hardware cloth.

4. Install the nest box high up

5. Mount the nest box away from the wind

It’s best to mount the birdhouse in a location sheltered from prevailing wind. This will help keep it warm during the night and prevent cold wind from blowing into the entrance hole. If you can, you’ll also want to position it in a place that receives direct afternoon sunlight, as this will make the nest box warmer during the night.

6. Turn your nest box front panel upside down (for some species)

While these steps will help you provide an ideal roosting box for birds, it’s also important to work with what you have and what you’re capable of doing.

“Remember that any type of shelter, no matter how imperfect, is helpful on a freezing cold night.”

explains Karen Patricio from All About Birds .

Help Local Birds by Providing Winter Nestboxes

Along with setting out a stocked feeder and water, winter roosting boxes are one of the best ways you can help your backyard birds survive the winter. While you can purchase roosting boxes, you can also easily convert your nest box into a winter roost house by following the tips above.

A close-up of two roosting tree sparrows in a nest box, with plant material underneath them.
A pair of tree sparrows roosting inside a Nest Box Live birdhouse.

By doing so, you may just have a family of bluebirds or chickadees move in for the winter. You will also likely have pairs of these same families nest in those boxes come early spring. As such, it’s never too late (or early) to set out a nest box. And if you’re curious about what birds roost in your birdhouse over the winter, consider setting up a nest box with a built-in camera! 

Do you have any experience with birds roosting in your nest boxes over the winter? We would love to hear about it, including if (or how) you adjusted the nest box and what bird species it was!

Categories
Feathered Facts

Bird Beaks: 10 Cool Facts About Nature’s Tools

A Keel-billed Toucan perched on a thick branch.

At first glance, a bird’s beak might seem simple – just a tool for eating. But look closer, and you’ll discover that this single feature can reveal an astonishing amount about a bird’s life.

A Keel-billed Toucan perched on a thick branch.
Image by Jeff Maw via Flickr.

A beak can tell us what a bird eats, how it builds its nest, how it attracts a mate, and even how it stays cool in extreme heat. Studying bird bills has led to some of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, including evidence linking modern birds to ancient dinosaurs and insights that helped shape the theory of evolution itself.

So in this article, we’re giving bird beaks the attention they truly deserve.

1. There is a Huge Diversity of Bird Beaks

As you have probably noticed, beaks come in a whole range of shapes and sizes.

This diversity isn’t accidental. Each beak shape is finely tuned to a bird’s lifestyle and diet, allowing different species to exploit different food sources and reducing the need for competition.

Seed-eating birds like finches have cone-shaped beaks: adapted to trap seeds in the groove at the bill base and crack them open.

Woodpeckers have strong, chisel-shaped bills: enabling them to drill into tough wood to find insects and deep nesting cavities.

Wading birds like the white ibis often have long, down-curved bills: for probing deep into mud and sand, capturing invertebate prey like crayfish and crabs.

Hummingbirds have long, thin bills: perfect for reaching deep into tubular flowers and drinking their nectar.

Birds of prey have sharp, hooked beaks: built to tear into meat and rip off morsels to eat.

Crossbills have a wedge-shaped, crossed beak: especially adapted to scoop conifer seeds out of their cones.

A compilation of six images of different types of bird beaks with labels describing the type of beak.
Images by Steve Jones, Edward Post and Jim Moodie via Flickr.

This is just a few of the main types of bird beak. With around 11,000 bird species globally, we would probably need a whole library to describe them all!

2. Birds Can Feel with Their Beaks

We often think of a beak as a bird’s “mouth”, but technically, its just the outer covering of the mouth beneath.

A bird’s beak is made up of two main parts:

  • the upper beak (maxilla)
  • the lower mandible

The beak is not a part of the skull in the same way as our jaws. It is actually an extension of the skull and is not made from solid bone.

So what are bird beaks made of?

The beak of a bird in a multi-layered structure including a bony core that connects to the skull bones of the bird. The outer layer of the beak is called the rhamphotheca, and is made from keratin – the same material in our hair and nails. Like our nails, a bird’s bill grows continously thorough its life.

Beaks contain a vascular layer, supplying blood to keep it healthy and growing – and here’s something that might suprise you: they’re packed with nerve endings:

This means birds can actually feel with their beaks. They can detect textures, temperature changes and even assess food quality before swallowing their meal.

A duck eating a slide of bread.
Image by Micha El Ga via Flickr.

3. Beak or Bill? Potato, Potahto.

A duck walks into a drugstore to buy a chapstick. The cashier asks the duck “how do you want to pay for this” and the duck replies “put it on my bill!”

You might have wondered if there was a difference between ‘beak‘ and ‘bill‘. Generally, no there isn’t a difference, and they can be used interchangably.

However, historically, the word ‘beak’ was mainly used to describe hooked bills, like those of birds of prey. Still today, we tend to use ‘bill’ when discussing waterfowl like ducks.

4. The Longest and the Largest

Bird beaks range from delicate to downright intimidating – but which ones break records?

The Smallest Bird Beak in the World

This is a suprising one.

The title goes to New Zealand’s iconic kiwi.

A Kiwi, a bird who can use smell to navigate in the dark.
Image by Shaun Lee via Flickr & Facebook.

“But don’t Kiwi’s have long beaks?”

From visual observation, yes, Kiwi’s seem to have a fairly long, but thin, beak.

But, if we get technical, the beak of a bird is measured from their nostrils to the tip. And kiwis have their nostrils at the end of their beak!

So technically speaking, kiwi’s have the smallest beaks in the bird world.

The Longest Bird Beak in the World

The winner here is the sword-billed hummingbird.

A sword-billed hummingbird hovering in mid-air.
Image by Guccipdo via Flickr.

In fact, this is the only bird in the world who’s beak is longer than its whole body. Its impressive bill can reach lengths of up to 4.7 inches.

The Biggest Bird Beak in the World

When width and volume are taking into account, the crown goes to the toco toucan.

A toco toucan balancing on top of a branch, as if it is about to take off in flight.
Image by Greg Lavaty via Flickr.

The colorful beak of the toco toucan has a surface area of up to one third of its total body size.

5. Before Beaks, There Were Toothed Snouts

A picture of a display in Fort Wallace Museum of the fossil remains of the ancient bird Ichthyornis dispar and a close-up of the birds toothed beak.

Meet Ichthyornis dispar.

This prehistoric bird lived around 100 million years ago, in North America.

It resembled a gull-like bird with a long beak and large eyes.

But this prehistoric bird had something modern birds lack entirely: teeth

A spotlight was cast on this bird in 2014, when scientists found the first complete skull fossil of this species. Using CT scans, they revealed that this ancient animal had sharp, curved teeth and large jaw muscles.

Why does this matter?

This ancient bird could be the link between dinosaurs and modern-day birds. Scientists theorize that it was the toothed snouts of dinosaurs that developed into the toothless beaks of modern-day birds – and I. dispar may have been a crucial middle stage.

The development of beaks in dinosaurs likely replaced the need for grasping forelimbs like those of velociraptors and t-rex. Without the need of forelimbs for feeding, these limbs were freed up for a new purpose… flying!

6. Birds Use Their Beaks to Find a Partner

Beaks play an important role in bird mating and courtship.

For example, did you know that the beak color of males in some bird species becomes brighter when they are ready to breed?

Or that some birds have ultraviolet beak markings that cannot be seen with our human eyes? And that these UV colors can signal health, genetic quality or mating status to other birds?

Beaks play a role in many courtship behaviors, including:

Billing

This is where a bird couple will get rub their beaks together in an act to strengthen their bond. A well-known bird who does this is the Atlantic Puffin.

‘Beak to Beak’ Feeding

This is a behavior we often see on our nesting cams. The male bird brings food to his female partner, passing it from his beak to hers.

Beak Clattering

Beak clattering is the sound that certain bird species make by knocking their upper and lower mandible (beak) together. This makes a distinctintive noise that these species use to communicate. The white stork is a well-known species to do this.

7. Bird Beaks and the Theory of Evolution

Maybe you’ve heard of Darwin’s finches?

And maybe you know that these were the birds that Charles Darwin came across in his pioneering expedition to the Galapagos Islands?

But do you know what makes this tiny birds so special?

During his visit to the Galápagos Islands, Charles Darwin observed several finch species found nowhere else on Earth. Scientists now believe these birds all evolved from a single ancestral species that arrived over a million years ago.

As finches spead across the islands, their beaks evolved to match different food sources, including:

A grid of nine labelled photos of different species of Galapagos finch. There is text on the right hand side to give the full name of each species.
Image by Ian Poxton via Flickr.
  • The vegetarian finch that has a parrot-like beak for eating fruit
  • The large ground finch that has a strong, cone-shaped beak for breaking tough seeds
  • The woodpecker finch that has a long, probing beak to find insects.

Studying these birds helped Darwin formulate the principle of natural selection – a cornerstone of evolutionary biology.

8. Baby Birds Have a “Tooth” on Their Beak

Baby birds hatch with something called an egg tooth.

Despite the name, this lump isn’t really a tooth. Instead it’s a temporary, hardened tip.

A newly-hatched lapwing chick with its egg tooth visible, in its ground nest, with another egg behind.
Image by Mikethereservewarden via Flickr.

Unhatched chicks use this to knock on the inside of the egg, eventually chipping themselves free from their shell.

After hatching, the egg tooth has served its purpose – and soon falls off.

9. Some Birds Use Their Beaks to Keep Cool

Birds can’t sweat or seak air-conditioned rooms – so how do they avoid overheating?

Some birds, especially those found in hot countries, use their beaks to cool down.

These birds can increase bird flow to their beaks – an uninsulated part of their body with many blood vessels – allowing excess heat to dissipate.

This means that birds with larger beaks can cool themselves more effeciently.

Research has shown that birds living in hotter climates tend to have bigger beaks than those in cooler regions. Take the Toco Toucan and the Greater Hornbill – you’ll only find these big-beaked birds in tropical climates!

Pied Hornbill Scores as High as Primates in Cognitive Tests
Image by Andrew Hunt via Flickr.

Where is gets even more fasincating is research done by scientist Sara Ryding on Australian parrots. She found:

  • Since 1871, the beak size of gang-gang cockatoos and red-rumped parrots increased by 4-10%.
  • This size increase is in parallel with climate change and rising temerpatures.

Ryding suggests that “there is widespread evidence of ‘shape-shifting’ (changes in appendage size) in response to climate change and its associated climatic warming”.

10. Why Captive Birds Need Beak Trimming

As mentioned previously, bird beaks are made of keratin – the same material our fingernails and hair are made from. And just like our nails, the beaks of birds continually grow.

Wild birds will naturally file down their beaks through their feeding and foraging habits. You’ll often see them rubbing their beaks against branches.

Captive birds often lack these opportunities. Without natural wear, their beaks can become overgrown, making feeding difficult or even dangerous.

For this reason, beak trimming is sometimes necessary for birds kept in captivity to maintain their health and wellbeing.

More Than Just a Beak

Bird beaks are far more fascinating that I first realised. Not only can their shape reveal what a bird eats, but also how it courts a mate or builds its nest and even how it has evolved over millions of years. Beaks offer a unique window into both modern bird behavior and deep evolutionary history – the humble beak is truly one of the most revealing features in the avian world.