Log Cabin Bird Houses and Feeders

Log cabins have long held an attraction for folks in the US. The log homes of our ancestors have always evoked nostalgic feelings for the time of adventure and exploration that we feel for the pioneer days of the expanding US borders. Think of how many times you've been driving and spotted a log cabin and without a doubt, someone in the car takes note and blurts out how they would love to live in a long cabin.

A log cabin birdhouse is a small way to capture some of that frontier spirit in your backyard.

You can find these log cabin birdhouses in a range of styles from a simple structure, one-room cabin to a more ornate structure that is more like lodge or log mansion rather than cabin-like. The prices range from under $10 to close to $100.

Some of today's log cabin birdhouses are actually made from bamboo. Bamboo bird houses have become popular recently as bamboo has come into vogue as a renewable resource. Available on the market are all sorts of bamboo items, ranging from baskets, furniture, frames, flooring, and kitchen cabinets. Of course, like any resource, just because it has the potential to be renewable doesn't mean that it actually is farmed that way, and some countries are much better than others about enforcing best practices. Please check out your resources.

For bamboo bird houses, however, they are sturdy and relatively weatherproof, yet can have the appearance of a traditional log cabin house.

While our feathered friends don't have political backgrounds or debates, log cabins have long been associated with our United States Presidents. On the political scene, log cabins were originally embraced by William Henry Harrison and the Whigs but there were a total of ten United States Presidents that were born in log cabins.

Of course the most famous of these presidents is Abraham Lincoln, but the other nine had humble beginnings too. They are: Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, and Chester Arthur.

Two of the most important factors that settlers weighed before deciding where to build a log cabin was the amount of sunlight the cabin location received and the drainage in the area. Most cabins were one-story or often one and a half stories high (known as a loft).

The cabins were built from logs cut from the surrounding forests and then were laid horizontally. The logs were notched and interlocked, although sometimes they were spiked together to secure them. The gaps in between the logs were filled with mud or grass for weatherproofing purposes but on a log cabin birdhouse, it will just be glued together.

Unlike our ancestral pioneers, you can place this type of bird house wherever your heart desires!