The Speckle-chested Piculet
Hi, we’re The Aviators of Milwee Middle School. We are Jonah Z, from 8th grade, Amora B, from 8th grade, Alyson M, from 7th grade, and Grayson P, from 7th grade. We designed a house for an endangered bird called a “Speckled-Chested Piculet”. Our teacher, Mrs. Unterreiner helped us find out materials and better ways to show off our hard work.
MATERIALS LIST
- Boxes
- Tea bags
- Mask
- Tape
- Tri Fold plastic
- Spray Paint: Silver and black
- Leaves
- Grass
- Hot Glue gun and glue sticks for (ALL OF THIS ARE RECYCLED MATERIALS)
The reason why we chose this bird was the fact that it was extremely endangered, so much in fact there almost no intel on the species. The way we accommodated to its home in Peru, in the valleys. We made it more of a tree house for it to stay away from predators. It looks taller because we wanted to contribute to an urban theme. Another thing about our birdhouse is that it’s all recycled material and all efficiently recycled too.
PROJECT LOG
The brainstorming process we came up with was to build the house out of half of a huge cardboard box with another smaller box that fits the sides on the bottom, with pegs that lead up to the non-existent roof. Though we decided we should do something different. We decided we should lay it out more like a two story house, window on the sides, and little platforms instead of the pegs. We also downsized the area since the bird is at max four inches as part of the picidae family; or the woodpecker family. We also decided to theme it more domestic, more city-like. Little bird seed money bags and protected by rain better than other birdhouses. As well as a houseplant/lilacs. Then the houseplant idea was scrapped since it was available small enough in stores. We then decided to use four different boxes for their own different areas. The four boxes we had had originally were then brought down to three and were assembled to look more like a train. Then the boxes were all stacked on top as we thought more about our suburban design, more like a skyscraper. It then incorporated pegs out to a ‘front lawn’ and the smaller living space box on top of the other two boxes. We cut off the long flaps on the bottom of the box and left the short ones for a platform. The box started widening from the work process so we taped them closer so the box would stay together. Plastic tri-fold windows were added to all sides of the middle box, the top box and spray paint was applied to have a better chance of repelling water. We installed a mask as a hammock/nesting area for the bird and put in a tea bag to hold bird food. The top house is installed into the middle one by hot glue. The top and middle boxes then got hot glued to the bottom one. We also painted the outside of the box green. Then added grass and leaves to help blend into trees, as well as make it prettier.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT OUR DESIGN
- In all of our original designs, the ‘house’ portion was supposed to be small, and used only for nesting. We decided against that to make more shelter for rain and storm.
- During the whole ‘Are we doing this bird?’ conversation, is that very little is known about it. One site only displays one sentence containing the location of the bird, it’s appearance, why it’s going extinct, and that it has been rated as endangered.
- The “mask hammock” was an idea from our teammate who had an unworn mask. He also came up with the idea.
TEAM CONTRIBUTION
- Amora B. assisted with building the birdhouse and assembled the tri-fold board.
- Grayson P. assisted Amora as well as painted the birdhouse and came up with it’s interior design.
- Alyson M. did the website, birdhouse, and video
- Jonah Z. did the website, video and tri-fold board
INTERNET SITES USED/ BIBLIOGRAPHY
- animalia.bio
- climatestotravel.com
