Bird-friendly Masonry

A project for bird-bricks was recently pointed in our direction and it immediately reminded us of the 2011 Animal Architecture award winning Nest Works project by 51% Studios.

Bird-Bricks, reported by the AtlanticCities.com is a brick-based version of the cmu-based Nest Works and is aimed at London’s dwindling sparrow population. From the online source:

Enter Aaron Dunkerton, a 22-year-old graduate of London’s Kingston University who has a clever idea: If we’re not going to stop throwing up habitat-negating structures, why not at least make them more friendly to wildlife? Dunkerton’s idea to save the sparrows is to manufacture bricks with lacunae inside accessible by a hole in the brick – both “specifically designed to meet the requirements of sparrows,” he says. That way, the birds can fly into them and build a nest, with humans strolling by remaining little the wiser.

Dunkerton’s prototype “bird brick” is assembled from five components specially made by a West Sussex brick manufacturer. The nesting box can be incorporated into brick structures that are under construction, like houses and garden walls, where its unobtrusive appearance gives it ample camouflage. He recommends putting two or three of them into a single structure to “suit communal nesting habits,” conjuring up the image of a chimney ringing with the strange tweeting of internal birds.

The bricks are mass-produced and installed along with their regular, less bird-friendly, counterparts. Bird-bricks looks like it could be a viable strategy for some types of birding habitation, but we’d like to hear the reports after a few months of in the field trial. Regardless, it’s an interesting counterpart to what we had previously considered a viable alternate urban avian habitat. More about the bird-brick can be found at the reporting media’s website and on Aaron’s personal website.