Bird/Butterfly/Bee Boxes - what do you recommend?

Cuilean

I'm amassing a decent collection of animal nesting boxes, but being a beginner, I'm always up for advice on how to up my game. I've got a slate roofed nest box and "multi nest box" where I can change the entrance to make it appropriate for larger or smaller birds, a metal roofed solitary bee house with bamboo rods, which I saw being used by a solitary red mason bee, and a wooden butterfly house.

In terms of failures, the all-wooden butterfly house is already rotting. That'll teach me to leave untreated wood at the mercy of the great British weather. I'll be chucking that at the end of the season, but I've not seen it in use at all, so I'm not too worried that I'm depriving anyone of a habitat.

I'd quite like to add a bat box, as I've seen a few bats zooming around the area, but I'm not entirely sure how well they'd get used, or what the success rate is for them. Anyone got any experience of bat boxes?

I feel I should add that I'm aware I can leave the garden to overgrow to make natural habitats, but in a few months we're due to have the builders in to build an extension (Not losing any garden, just covering the old patio area) and I suspect that's going to cause a lot of ground level disruption, so I'm focusing on my shelters just now.

Any recommendations for habitat boxes?

ljonski

http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Category/0/Wildlife_Habitats.html

londonTiger

bird boxes = be ready to deal with birtd dropps cos they drop a lot!