No Place Like Home: DIY Wildlife Houses for Home Habitats, Gardeners, and Kids

By Katy Gorsuch

If you’re anything like me, you spent much more time as a kid carefully constructing homes for rolly pollies (aka isopods) than you did playing sports. And there’s no reason that should stop! Below are a selection of houses you can build for our wildlife neighbors, each with a difficulty rating based on the time and materials needed to put them together (Note: if you need to change the size, you can use the same scale). 

Toad Abode

Create Your Own State Park, 2020

Rating: Easy, 1 out of 5 Slugs

Materials: a flower pot or a bowl or some rocks or an old birdhouse (or anything else that works where you are and with what you have)

A home for a toad, or a “toad abode” is one of the simplest wildlife homes you can put together! The goal is to create a spot that is cool, shaded, and on the ground, in whatever form that takes. If this is going to go in a sunny spot in your space, choose materials that don’t heat up much, like ceramic, or tuck the house back underneath bushes or shrubs. 

Some ideas: 

• A rock cave: Take some conveniently shaped rocks (or bricks), and securely arrange them to make a small cave. 
• A broken flower pot: Sand down any sharp edges to make sure a thin-skinned amphibian doesn’t cut themselves. Other options include digging down into the earth to make a hollow depression and simply flipping an intact flowerpot upside down, providing a space for a frog or toad to enter with no work on your part.
• A tree frog palace: PVC pipes provide a sleeping place for tree frogs during the hot day times, and a 90* turn piece can help prevent tree frog hideaways from flooding in the rain. The base should be soil, for digging down if necessary, and the top layer of gravel prevents soil from overflowing the edges of the bowl when it rains.

A PVC pipe palace for petite pollywogs (just kidding, it’s for adult tree frogs). Katy Gorsuch, 2024.

Be aware that predators can learn that these abodes are a reliable source of snacks.  Keep the cats indoors and put the houses away if it seems like they are becoming a fast food stop!

Any materials that are durable enough for outside, while also being kind to your animal neighbors (i.e. not sharp, and avoiding plastic that may leach microplastics), is a usable material to make a toad abode!

Bee Hotel

Rating: Medium, 3 out of 5 Flowers

Materials: a weather-proof container and some hollow reeds (dried bamboo is perfect for this, and often readily available when homeowners cut back the invasive species) or a block of wood and a drill or some bare ground

There’s been a lot of conversation in recent years around the decline of bee colonies, but solitary native bees are often left out of the discussion. Only about 10% of North America’s 4,000 bee species live in hives! This means the vast majority of our native bees are solitary, and so need somewhere to care for their young (or at least drop them off). 

Some options:

• Wood block: Drill holes in an untreated wood block. Holes should range from 3/32 – 3/8 inches in diameter, with holes smaller than 1/4 inch in diameter being 3 – 4 inches deep, and holes larger than 1/4 inch being 5 – 6 inches deep (Xerxes Society Guide). The variation in these sizes is based upon the different bee species who will use the holes as nesting sites.
• Reed bundle: Using only materials not treated with pesticides, cut lengths of hollow reeds and or bamboo to 6 – 8 inch lengths. Arrange them in a bundle in a container, then put the container on its side so the reeds are horizontal.  Stem-nesting bees will lay eggs with a mixture of pollen and nectar food for when their larvae hatch, then close the cell and lay another egg. It’s best to change out the reeds on a yearly basis to minimize loss of the baby bees to nest predators and parasites. The best time to do this is after bees have emerged from hibernation in the spring (after the weather has been consistently above 50*F for several days in a row).
• Bare ground: The easiest way to support native bees is to simply clear some bare ground. 70% of native bees are ground nesters, and will simply burrow to lay their eggs. A patch that is in sunlight for at least part of the day will provide warmth that will encourage nesting, and ensuring it is away from regular foot traffic keeps the peace between humans and our flying friends. Soil type will dictate what kind of bees burrow there! Remember not to treat this soil with pesticides to avoid hurting the baby bees.
• Native plants: An even easier way to provide bees with nesting habitat is to plant pithy native flowers! This is the natural home for stem-nesting bees, so simply leaving them to dry in the fall allows them to have a nest site for their overwintering babies. Don’t cut the plants below 18 inches before spring, when the ground warms up and native bees awaken from hibernation. Some examples include joe pye weed, goldenrod, wild bergamot, and swamp milkweed. Read Find more examples here!

Secure any of these nesting sites out of major weather, but somewhere where it can get partial sun (east and southeast-facing work best)

To read more, see the Xerxes Society Save the Stems brochure and their Nests for Native Bees guide, and our own guide for Bee-Friendly Backyards!

Bat Box

Rating: Intricate, 5 out of 5 Moths

Materials: untreated wood, nails or screws, potentially a saw, measuring tape, sand paper or dremel

Some wildlife houses are for raising babies, others are shelters for sleep, but a bat house can take either role depending on its location! Spring and summer are the times bat houses are most likely to be used, and whether they’re used by nursing mothers raising pups, or bats without pups, depends on the internal temperature. Bat houses in locations that get early sun warm up a house for babies who have been left alone overnight while mother bats hunt. Meanwhile, bats without pups tend to prefer a house that warms up in the evening, as this will allow them to maintain a cool torpor through the day until it is time to exit their roost to hunt. 

See the bat house plans here (rocket boxes are especially favored by temperate bats) and Bat Conservation International’s Guidelines here for additional (and useful advice). 

When building your bat house:

• Use untreated wood: Bats groom by licking themselves, and may ingest chemicals from treated wood.
• Bat boxes should be tall: Bats prefer roosting in spaces where they can find a wide variety of temperatures and humidities (called microclimates), so their tiny bodies get neither too hot nor too cold.
• The more boxes the better: Multiple locations nearby mean bats can leave for a nearby roost if needed due to predators or temperature needs. 
• Attach 10-16 ft from ground to bottom of house: Bats “drop and fly” to leave their roosts, and this gives space to do so.
• Make sure there’s a lip extending from the bottom: This is how bats will enter; bats land on a rough surface and use their thumbs to crawl upwards into their shelters. So, either ensure the lip is roughed up with sandpaper, or use a dremel to carve horizontal grooves to allow them to climb in! Avoid using mesh, as this may detach and trap a roosting bat.
• Make sure the house doesn’t overheat: High heat indexes can cause problems for tiny bats; ensure the location for the house isn’t in direct sunlight for too many hours at a time, or install a sunshade that you can deploy on hot days!