Bird Hovels
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
These have been showing up around the East Village over the past month. My guess is they are made by someone with some mental problems, or less likely an artist making some sort of statement about homelessness. They are all placed barely above head level, and I doubt any bird will make use of them. Rain has demolished some of them already.
these are great! do you know who makes them?
"Bird hovel". Ha! Yeah, they’re so lo-fi and special that way.
Fascinating ramshackle creations…
No idea, celso. My guess is someone with mental problems or an artist making a statement on homelessness. I’m tending towards the former.
And yes Irena, they are special, all of them are different. I have more examples to post.
awesome.
I’ve been seeing these lately and wondered who was behind them…assumed it was kids.
I guess kids are a possibility, but they seem too much composed of filthy trash for them to be an adult supervised activity.
so good. can’t want to see one in person…
looks can be deceiving; most of these dishelveled looking bird houses appear to be carefully designed and executed. also, while it might not be a big thing, this person is using tie-wraps to secure these things to fences and things.
That Tropicana one actually looks like it could be a functional bird house. The container shouldn’t leak, it’s level and it has a perch allowing the birds access to the entrance. It looks like a project a kid might have made, copying the design from a magazine or something. Yeah I noticed the plastic ties also on the hovels. I don’t think they were done by the same person.
The Tropicana house looks much more organized, like the person was doing their own recycling. The house on the fence looks much more crazy and the box looks like it was taken from the trash.
I think the bird in there is married to his cousin
Looks like a sad school project to me. Maybe the kids were instructed to build birdhouses out of recycled material.
In any case, House Sparrows and Starlings would be the most likely to use them and they are wildly detrimental to the rest of the native birds in NY.
Here’s one in Prospect Heights:
My guess is that’s a grade school project, like your commenter said. It has a perch and is not attached with a plastic strap, like the other one’s I’ve photographed that turned out to be the project of a pair of Swiss artists, making a statement about homelessness.
this is great, i love this shit, i wanna make little garbage homeless junkys to live in them
hahahaha, the roofing plastic is a nice thoughtful touch