The Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Web site features house plans at Build A Birdhouse, Building Nest Structures, Feeders, and Photo Blinds for North Dakota Wildlife, and Oklahoma Bats...Coming Out of the Dark. Unfortunately, none of these publications provide much guidance on placement or maintenance of the finished product.

However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Migratory Bird Management Web site (http://migratorybirds.fws.gov/) offers a series of pamphlets that fill in some of these gaps. Homes for Birds discusses the species that use bird houses, provides background on building houses, and tells where and how high to mount them for different species. Backyard Bird Feeding provides similar information about feeders, plus information on seed mixes for select species. Landscaping To Attract Birds is for the truly dedicated, and offers suggestions on how to make your entire yard attractive to birds. In case some unintended problems develop along the way, they also serve a pamphlet entitled Backyard Bird Problems.

If you are interested in additional information on a particular species of bird, try searching the web for sites dedicated to that species, such as the Purple Martin Conservation Association (http://www.purplemartin.org/) site, which serves detailed information on house placement for Purple Martin in their Management Tips section.

If you have built or received a bat house and are wondering where to place it, visit the Bat Conservation International Web site (http://www.batcon.org/), where you will find a wealth of information on bats in general and specific information on finishing and mounting bat houses.