Noeline Woven Bird House AUS
Nowhere Left to Shelter: Why a Dying Bush Craft May Be the Little Birds' Last Chance Before the Summer Storms
Plenty of Australians put a dish of water out for the birds on a forty-degree day. Hardly anyone asks where a blue wren goes when the hail comes through at four in the arvo, or when the thermometer on the verandah won't drop below thirty at midnight. Noeline Burkett, 72, has spent six summers on the New England tablelands finding out. She's selling the farm after fifty-one years, and her last paddock of grass goes with it.
A Verandah Outside Uralla, Where the Kettle Never Gets Cold
Noeline weaves on the back verandah, at an old laminex kitchen table that her late husband Ron carried out there in 1988 and never carried back in. Bundles of dried tussock grass lean against the weatherboards, tied with baling twine and labelled in biro with the paddock they came from. A CWA tea towel covers a tin of Anzac biscuits. Noeline Burkett, 72, is working a long strand of grass around a ring of the stuff on her knee. She doesn't stop to talk. Her mum taught her that grass you put down goes stiff.
"Everyone reckons it's water they're short of in summer," she says, hands still going. "Water's easy. There's a birdbath in every second yard in Uralla. What they're short of is somewhere to get out of it. Out of the hail, out of the wind, out of the sun at three o'clock in the afternoon."
The Afternoons Nobody Thinks About
Here's the part of summer the gardening columns never get to. A superb fairy-wren, the little blue wren half the country grew up with, weighs about as much as a twenty-cent piece. It can't sweat. On a forty-degree afternoon it pants to cool itself and loses water faster than it can find it. And when a summer storm rolls in off the ranges, with hail the size of marbles and wind that strips the leaves off the bottlebrush, a bird that small has about thirty seconds to find somewhere to get under.
"They don't die of thirst out there," Noeline says. "That's what people think. It's not the drought that gets the little ones. It's having nowhere to duck into. A bird with no hidey-hole is just a target, whether it's hail or a hawk or a heatwave."
Australia's small woodland birds have been in trouble for decades, and the reasons are the ones you'd expect: clearing, cats, Indian mynas, noisy miners chasing the little ones out. What gets far less attention is something Noeline noticed from her own verandah. It isn't only the food and water that went. It's the hidey-holes.
"Mum always said the little blue fellas need somewhere to duck into when a storm comes. I thought she was just being soft. It took me till I was sixty-six to work out she was right."
And this is where most of us get it wrong, with the best will in the world. A nest box is built for breeding: eggs, chicks, a few weeks in spring. What a little bird needs on a forty-degree afternoon or in a hailstorm isn't a nursery. It's a hidey-hole.
Where the Little Birds Used to Shelter, and What Happened to It
Ask where a blue wren goes in a storm and most people say "into a bush." Some do. But a lot of the old shelter that our small birds relied on has simply gone, and it went quietly. Noeline can name every bit of it.
The Four Hidey-Holes the Bush Used to Have
A big old eucalypt full of hollows, cracks and loose bark. It takes more than a hundred years for a gum to grow a hollow. "And what happens to an old dead gum in a paddock?" Noeline says. "Somebody calls it a hazard and it's firewood by Saturday."
Thick, prickly native understorey, the kind blue wrens live their whole lives in. Australia still clears around half a million hectares of native vegetation every year. On the edge of town it becomes house blocks with roll-on turf.
Timber, gaps, a sheet of tin that never quite sat flat. Every one had birds sheltering in it somewhere. Now it's a Colorbond shed with sealed edges. "Lovely and tidy," Noeline says. "Useless if you weigh nine grams."
Woven baskets, old hats, a fern in a wire cage. "Every verandah round here had something woven hanging off it when I was a girl," she says. "Now it's a ceiling fan and a security light."
Read that list again. Not one of those four was ever made for a bird. Every one was a leftover: a tree nobody felled, a bit of scrub nobody cleared, a shed nobody pulled down. And in one lifetime we've tidied nearly every leftover away.
"A Nest Box Isn't a Hidey-Hole"
Walk into any hardware store and you'll find them by the dozen: wooden nest boxes with a flat lid and a round hole, ready to screw onto a tree. It's the first thing most of us buy for the birds, and for parrots raising chicks they can do the job. The trouble is what they're built for: one pair, a clutch of eggs and a few weeks in spring. And blue wrens don't use them at all. They build their own little domed nests deep in prickly shrubs, low to the ground, and they shelter the same way: low, close, in the thick of it.
"I'm not having a go at anyone who's got one," Noeline says. "There's a box on the old gum out the back for the rosellas. But nobody tells you a nursery and a hidey-hole aren't the same thing. So it goes up high in the full sun, a myna's in it by Christmas, and the blue wrens are still down in the agapanthus when the hail comes. And don't get me started on those grass balls they sell online as hummingbird houses. We haven't got a single hummingbird in this country."
Why the Nest Box on Your Tree Doesn't Help the Little Ones
The standard box is sized and hung for rosellas and other hollow-nesters. Blue wrens never go near them. They want cover low down in thick shrubs, not a wooden room three metres up a trunk.
Screwed to a tree in full sun, a thin box heats up like a parked car. On a forty-degree afternoon it's hotter inside than out. That isn't shelter for a bird that can't sweat.
Most go up high on a bare trunk where they're easy to see, a long way from the nearest shrub. When the hail comes, a bird that small has about thirty seconds. It isn't flying across the yard and up a tree to get there.
The holes are cut for parrots, which makes them big enough for an Indian myna or a starling, and once a myna moves in, the little birds don't get a look-in. "Mynas are bullies," she says. "You don't build the bully a house."
"That's the bit that gets me," Noeline says. "People spend good money wanting to help the birds, and the one thing nobody asks is where the little ones go when the sky turns green."
"A Big Old Grevillea Beats Anything I Weave"
Noeline will tell you this herself before you ask. The best shelter in any Australian garden is a thick, prickly native shrub: a big old grevillea, a hakea hedge, a tangle of bursaria. "If you've got one of those, you don't need me," she says. "Keep your money and plant another one."
Then she nods towards the new estates going in on the edge of Armidale. "But go and drive through one of those. Colorbond fence, roll-on lawn, a Hills hoist and three agapanthus. There's not a hidey-hole in the whole street. Telling those people to plant a grevillea and wait fifteen years isn't advice. It's a shrug. A nest tied into whatever they've got, that they'll do. Ten minutes."
November 2020: The Afternoon the Hail Came Through
Noeline didn't set out to make anything for birds. For forty years she wove baskets and table mats for the CWA stall at the Uralla show, the way her mum Dulcie had taught her in the CWA rooms when she was ten. Dulcie always kept one old woven basket hanging under the verandah roof "for the little blue fellas", as she called them. When Dulcie died, Noeline kept it hanging on its nail, out of sentiment, and never thought about it again.
Then came a stinking hot afternoon in late November 2020. The sky over the ranges went green-black, and at ten past four the hail started: fifteen minutes of ice the size of golf balls, so loud on the tin roof that Noeline couldn't hear the dog. When it stopped, she went out onto the verandah and found small shapes on the lawn among the hailstones: two silvereyes, a thornbill, a little brown bird she couldn't name.
"And then I looked over at Mum's old basket, still hanging on its nail, wired tight to the wall the way she always had it, and I tipped it forward to have a look," she says. Her hands stop for the first time all morning. "Five blue wrens. Five of them in there, squashed in together like sardines, dry as a bone. The cock bird and his whole family. They sat tight for a good ten minutes, then out they went into the grevillea like nothing had happened. I sat down on the step and had a bit of a cry, and I'm not a crier."
That summer she took Dulcie's basket off its nail, turned it over in her hands strand by strand until she understood how it was made, hung it back on the wall, and started weaving her own: small woven hidey-holes sized for little birds, with a proper thatched hat on top. Every time a storm came through, or the thermometer went past thirty-eight, she walked round the garden afterwards and pencilled what she found on the inside of the pantry door. A feather caught in the weave. Droppings inside the doorway. Little blue birds slipping out once the sky cleared.
"Mum knew they'd duck into a basket. What she never knew was how to make one they'd come back to. That took me six summers."
The Hidey-Hole Principle: Five Details That Decide Whether the Blue Wrens Come Back
A little bird picks its shelter the way you'd pick a motel in a hailstorm: fast, and it only comes back if nothing went wrong the first time. Anything that swings, leaks or cooks in the sun gets one go. Six summers of pencil marks on a pantry door, Noeline says, boiled down to five things.
The Hidey-Hole Principle
Straw laid in overlapping tiers like an old bush hut, sitting on a solid wooden disc that overhangs the room below. It takes the sting out of hail, throws the rain off the edge and casts shade over the doorway in the afternoon. "Mum's baskets had no roof. They'd go to mush by February. The hat was my first fix."
Big enough for a blue wren, a silvereye, a thornbill or a pardalote. Too small for an Indian myna or a starling. "You make the door for the little ones. The big ones can find their own."
Blue wrens live in family groups, and they shelter the way they live: all together. The round room has no dead corners and is sized for a little family pressed close. "They don't want a mansion. They want to be squashed in like sardines."
Tight enough to keep out the wind and the rain, open enough to let the heat and the damp out, so it doesn't turn into an oven on a hot afternoon. "A plywood box bakes. A tin one cooks. Grass breathes."
Every nest has a jute loop for hanging and comes with twine to bind it tight into a shrub, against a post or under the verandah, so it can't spin in a nor'wester. "A basket that swings is a basket nobody stays in," Noeline says. "That's not mine. That's Mum's." It's the one change she says made the biggest difference on her pantry door.
Six Summers, One Pantry Door, 1,187 Pencil Marks
The pantry door in the farmhouse kitchen hasn't been painted since 2020, and it won't be. From top to bottom it's covered in pencil: dates, storms, temperatures, little tally marks in rows. Every nest she has hung or given away is up there, and so is whether anything sheltered in it.
She runs her finger down the first summer. "The ones I tied into the grevillea or the hakea, they had blue wrens in them every storm," she says. "The ones I tried hanging free on a string off the very same bushes? I gave up on those after the second summer. They never went near them. Not once."
Then she finds a line near the middle. 14 Dec 2023. Hail 20 min. Tank stand nest. Six blue wrens out at 5.40. "Six of them out of one little nest," she says, "like clowns out of a Mini."
And there's Graeme, a retired stock agent in Glen Innes, who bought one at the Uralla show in 2021. Every time a big storm comes through, a photo arrives on Noeline's phone of little birds coming out of his nest afterwards. She's got more than forty of them saved.
"That's my pay, that is. Not the money. Knowing there's a bit of grass off our back paddock tied into a bush in Glen Innes, and after the worst storm of the year a grown man's standing at his back door with his phone out, counting blue wrens."
Before You Buy Anything: Three Things That Cost Nothing
Before anybody orders a nest, Noeline would like them to do three things first. She's firm about the order.
Keep the prickly stuff. Don't rip out the grevilleas, hakeas or old bottlebrush, and don't prune them into balls. Thick, prickly native shrubs are the best free shelter in any Australian garden.
Put out water, in the shade. A shallow dish with a stone in it, under a shrub, not in the full sun on the patio. Top it up on hot days.
Get it up before the storms. Little birds learn their shelters before they need them. "Hang it in January and you've missed half the season," Noeline says. "The best couple of weeks of the year to put one up are the ones we're in now."
"Do those first," she says. "If you've got all three, you might not need me at all. Most people haven't."
What People Write After Their First Summer
"Never once thought about where they go when a storm comes through. We've got a lawn, a Colorbond fence and a Hills hoist, that's about it. Tied Noeline's nest into the bottlebrush by the back door in October. First big storm in November, my husband's at the kitchen window with a beer and watches four little blue wrens dive straight in. Thirty years driving trucks and he went very quiet. Reckons it was the hay fever."
"We had a nest box on the gum for six years and the only thing that ever moved in was a myna. This one is tied into the grevillea by the verandah and looks like a little thatched hut. Now there's a whole family of blue wrens living in it."
The Questions Noeline Gets Asked Most
"Most common question I get, and the answer's yes. They're about in most towns that have a bit of scrub nearby. They're tiny, they're quick and they stay low, so you don't notice them till you're looking for them. Stand at the back door after the next storm and watch the bottom of your shrubs."
"Two at the least. Mum never hung just the one, and she knew why. The blue wrens want theirs low and deep in a prickly bush. The silvereyes like theirs a bit higher. And they don't share: a family of blue wrens will pile into one together, but the silvereyes want their own. Then there's the weather. The storms come in from the west, and the hot wind comes from the north-west. Put one on each side of the house and whatever's blowing, there's one out of it. Most people who start with one ring back for a second before Christmas."
"Not through that door. It's sized for the little ones. A myna can stand on top of it and squawk all it likes, it's not getting in."
"Not if you hang it right. Tie it into a thick shrub or under the verandah on the east side, out of the afternoon sun. The thatch throws shade over the door and the grass lets the heat out. That's the whole point of grass. A plywood box would cook them."
"No, leave it bare. They'd only chuck it out again. They like it clean and they'll sort it out themselves."
The Last Cut From the Back Paddock
Every nest Noeline has ever woven came from one place: the back paddock behind the woolshed, where the native tussock grows long, fine and tough on the granite soil. She cut it every autumn for fifty years. She knew which slope ran to seed first and which week in April to cut, once it had cured gold on the stem and before the frosts knocked it flat.
Ron died in 2019. This summer, after fifty-one years, Noeline is selling the farm and moving to her daughter's place in Coffs Harbour. The agent's sign is already on the front gate, and the new owners are putting the whole place under crop. She cut the back paddock for the last time in April.
"I could buy grass," she says. "Raffia off the internet, dyed green, comes in a plastic bag from overseas and falls to bits in one summer. That's not grass. I've cut that paddock since I was twenty-one. I'm seventy-two. I'm not starting again on the coast with somebody else's grass."
Nobody else in the family weaves. When this year's cut is gone, the pantry door stays with the house, and six summers of knowing which hidey-hole a blue wren will take go with it.
What's left is in boxes on the back verandah: the nests woven from the last cut of the back paddock. There were 188 of them when we visited at the start of October.
"It Was Never About the Money. It Still Isn't."
Noeline could charge what the galleries in Armidale charge for hand-woven work, and anyone who's held one of her nests would understand why. She won't. She has kept the price of the last cut exactly where it's always been. Not as a sale. Not to clear the boxes. Because that's what she wants.
"I don't need the money. I want them out in gardens. I want somebody at their kitchen window after a storm saying, 'They're in.' That's worth more to me than whatever's on the price tag."
Her granddaughter Jess, 31, set up a small online shop, Cedar & Tin Co., after the landline at the farm wouldn't stop ringing the summer before last. "Nan was taking orders on the back of feed receipts," she says. "Turns out there are heaps of people who put water out for the birds every summer and never once thought about where they go in a storm. Once they hear it, they can't unhear it."
Noeline's Hidey-Hole Nest, in Brief
Every nest is woven by Noeline Burkett on her back verandah outside Uralla, from tussock grass she cut herself. Not a factory, not a production line. Six summers and nearly 1,200 pencil marks stand behind every one.
Made for shelter, not breeding: somewhere for small birds to get out of the hail, the wind and the afternoon heat, all through storm season.
About 22 cm tall and 17 cm wide, with a 35 mm door. Layered straw thatch on a wooden disc, a round woven room, a jute hanging loop, and tie-down twine included so it can be fixed firm and never swings.
188 nests remained when this article went to press. When the back-paddock grass is gone, there's no restock, no second cut and no successor.
Where to Find One
Noeline's nests are available only through Cedar & Tin Co., the small online shop her granddaughter Jess runs. You won't find them at the big hardware chains or on any marketplace. A 72-year-old woman on a verandah outside Uralla can't supply one, and she's got no interest in trying.
Before the Summer Storms
On the tablelands, storm season runs from October right through to March, and the first big one usually comes through in late October or early November. All over the country, the little birds are already working out where they'll duck into when the sky turns green. The ones that find somewhere will be back after every storm. The ones that don't will take their chances in the open.
And the boxes on Noeline's verandah are emptier every week. Last spring's nests were all gone before Melbourne Cup Day, and this year there won't be any more grass once these are gone.
If you're ordering, Noeline's own advice is to get two: one low in a prickly shrub for the blue wrens, one a bit higher for the silvereyes, on different sides of the house, so that whichever way the storm comes in from, there's always one out of the weather.
"I want every one of them tied into a bush before Christmas," Noeline says. "That's all I'm asking. Somewhere out of the afternoon sun, near a window, and somebody who'll have a look after the storm. The birds will do the rest."
Noeline's Whole-Summer Promise
Storms don't keep to a timetable, so this promise doesn't either. Tie it up and give it the summer. If you're not completely happy with the nest itself (the weave, the thatch, how it stands up to the weather), send it back for a full refund. No deadline, no conditions, no forms. Noeline stands behind every nest that leaves her verandah, and so does Cedar & Tin Co.. Free shipping Australia-wide.
More From the Gardens They Went To
"I'm a wildlife carer, and after every hailstorm we get shoeboxes of stunned silvereyes and blue wrens dropped off at the door. What Noeline talks about (a roof that actually keeps the hail off, a nest that doesn't swing, a door too small for mynas) is exactly what makes the difference. It's the only one I tell people to buy."
"We tied it into the grevillea on the 3rd of October and felt a bit silly doing it. First storm, three weeks later, there were droppings just inside the door the next morning. I stood at the window after the next two storms until I finally saw them go in. We'd never had blue wrens in this garden before."
"Bought one for us and one each for my two sisters for Christmas. Mum fed and watered the birds every summer of her life, rain, hail or heatwave. Tying it into her old bottlebrush felt like finishing something for her."
Disclaimer: This article is a sponsored post and contains advertising. The products featured have been carefully selected. Prices may vary.
The operator of this website has a financial connection to the products advertised. Product offered by Cedar & Tin Co. Money-back guarantee applies. Shipping and handling may apply. Results may vary. © 2026 The Craftsman's Review. All rights reserved.