Bird House Duplex

I am getting ready for the honey bee packages, they should be here in a couple of weeks, somewhere around April 20-24. I have screened bottoms on my two top bar hives and needed to add removable covers for those bottoms while the temperatures are still mild. I had some leftover scrap wood that I built into a bird house duplex. Here are the pieces cut up.

The parts are:
cedar fence picket 1x12 (10 inches each)
cover pine 1x4 x 10 inches
sides and middle pine 1x4 x8 inches
I wanted the front and back to be longer than the sides so that the birdhouse would ride on top of by back fence rail (aka squirrel hwy). The holes are 1 -1/2" inches in diameter. I hoping for finches or Chickadees.

Here it is assembled. I used the standard yellow fence screws. The center wall separates the bird house into two separate houses with bird holes on opposite sides. I used tin snips to cut the galvanized steel roof from a section of 6inch diameter a/c duct that I found in the garage. And did plenty of sanding to make it blend a little better with the new(er) fence.

 

 Here it is one hole facing us and one facing our behind neighbor. I used the same screws to attach it on the top rail of the fence. I was hoping to place the bird house right over the fence post for added rigidity, however that's right on the joint between two top rails and their slight misalignment made slipping the front and back too hard without loosening the front and back from the center and walls. I figured having the bird house tight was more important than placing on the post. The top rail forms the floor of the house. Our fence posts are on 5 ft centers (8 ft is standard), due to occasional high winds. So the fence is pretty rigid and with only a couple of screws into the top rail of the fence the duplex bird house is installed.