Its finally getting warmer outside, so I decided to come out of my shell and under the burning sunlight. Over a period of a couple days, while sitting in my backyard, I noticed that there were many birds passing by over our house one flock at a time. So I thought that they were just migrating back to the north since the weather was getting better. 

That was when an entire flock came down to our backyard and idled around. THAT was when I thought, "I wanted to make a place for them to stay".

There is something I have to admit: When I was coming up with a design for this project initially, I did not even consider the fact that bird psychology and human psychology are remotely different. Henceforth, this seemed like an interesting design perspective to me whereas a bird would feel threatened by this design so...this idea was scrapped. What's even more funny was I found a design that looked exactly like my own but it was just scaled up much larger for a chicken coop instead. But that's just for laughs and gags later on.

After doing some research on what attracts birds and what they avoid, I came up with a design that is easily accessible for the bird as well as the owner so that he/she could keep maintaining the birdhouse in terms of food supply and water supply. According to research done, food and water supply should be away and inaccessible to other predators and animals and to tackle that idea, I made the birdhouse compact enough to have compartments for both food and water. Furthermore, one of the ideas that I read about online was a feeding station that is free hanging, so that squirrels, rats and other animals that might eat the same foods would avoid it due to their weight. This idea, however, would not have worked out since it was also said that birds prefer to have a stable place to live, therefore they would stay away from flimsy tree branches that were not aged. Another factor to include would be a thicker layer of wood: according to the research done, a birdhouse should have aged wood and should be at least 3/4 of an inch thick to keep the birdhouse insulated.

Here are a couple screenshots of the design in Fusion 360. There are a few issues to discuss with the upbringing of this design into the software and IRL. First off, the the holes on the sides of the birdhouse: these should be latches or sliding doors but with that, I question whether the birdhouse could stay insulated or not. My solution to this was making the sliding door at least 2/3 of an inch in thickness. That way the insulation isn't compromised but it would still fit within a sliding compartment within the 3/4 inch thick birdhouse. Secondly, in this design, I forgot to add a way to filter out water from under the birdhouse in case there is ever heavy rain that seeps into the house itself. To tackle this issue, I would've added a couple holes at the bottom of the birdhouse where the nest would be resting to let the water seep through. Finally, the roof of the birdhouse is detachable so that the owner of the birdhouse can easily maintain the house itself since it is the owner's job to make sure the birdhouse is in top notch condition in places where the birds cannot maintain on their own.

This birdhouse has to be made out of aged wood, preferably pine wood. According to the research made, birds prefer to nest in stable trees. So if they see that the birdhouse is of the same material that they're accustomed to, it would serve as an attractive feature. 

Just to try it out at home, I tried creating the model to scale IRL. Here are a couple snapshots from the physical model.