Over the winter our resident squirrels finally destroyed one of our wooden bird boxes, they had been chewing on it for years but this year they finally broke in an detached it from the tree.

I’ve been making a few felt pods recently and thought one might translate well into a bird house. My only concern is that the squirrels will probably destroy a wool pod in a fraction of the time it took them to ruin the wooden bird house. I will have to find a squirrel-proof location for it.

I started with a tear-drop shaped resist and used 4 layers of merino for my first attempt. Unfortunately I made the hole too low and over stretched it while fulling the inside the pod. I think that pod will become a suspended bowl / pod.

For my second attempt I used strips of red muslin, green merino and grey gotland. This is what it looked like just after removing the resist and before a quick spin in the washing machine.

And after it came out of the machine. As before the grey gotland has consumed everything else, including the muslin:

I selected a spot on the side of the cabin that hopefully the squirrels won’t be able to get to, here is the pod in situ:

I added some fluff groomed from my cat as extra encouragement for the birds to move in but only time will tell if my pod is up to avian standards….