Friday, April 8, 2011

Tweet Tweet! Chirp! Chirp!

First project of the final quarter! We were assigned to make a bird house! For this project we worked with FUTURE Blooms and Keep Cincinnati Beautiful to build artist made birdhouses in a new bird sanctuary in Avondale. We first had to do research on the bird we wanted to make a house for. After seeing that all the holes were mostly the same size, I decided to make it accessible to all birds. Right away, I thought of a bee hive hanging in a tree. I wanted to create rings increasing in size from top to bottom. The bottom would be a bird bath, then there would be a surface for the bird to make a nest on, then a level that has perches on it. We had a small critique to discuss our ideas and everyone seemed to approve of my idea. However, my teacher told me to look up the Guggenheim Museum, because the building spirals up to different floors. I decided to use bicycle tire and tubing for my material. To start out, I covered a plastic container with rubber tubing. This would be the bottom for the bird bath. Then I took a tire and spiraled it up to the height I wanted it at. To stick everything together, i used crazy glue and goop. I made sure there would be enough room between the levels for the birds to get in. Instead of making a whole, the birds can enter the bird house at any section. The surface for the bird to make a nest on and the roof are made out of a thick piece of cardboard wrapped in bike tubing. The roof can be taken off because I put ledges for the roof to sit on. Instead of making the perches on the inside, I decided to put them sporadically on the outside. I was going to use wood for the perches and then I realized that I could use the valve stem from the bicycle. I used invisible cord to hang the bird house.
Here it is before I painted it.
I painted it a shade of green that wouldn't be too bright. I wanted it to blend in outside.
Here is a view of the inside.
This is it hung outside on campus after our critique.
During the critique, the lady from FUTURE Blooms said that it would be perfect to hang at their sanctuary. However, I told her that I wanted to keep it so I could keep an eye on it and see how it does with the birds. I was also thinking of putting some kind of vine plant in the bottom of the bird house to attract humming birds. I will post more pictures as spring moves on to see what happens with this bird house.
Many thanks to my sister who works at Cycle Sport for giving me used bicycle tires and my Mom for giving me left over paint she didn't need anymore. This was probably the cheapest project I have done yet this year.

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