There's nothing as snuggly as a home made from PVC pipe. At least that's what black-capped chickadees seem to think, according to my friend Susan Sharbaugh, who earned a degree studying Alaska chickadees.

A short while back, she fitted some black-caps with tiny transmitters in an attempt to see where these birds, as light as a handful of paper clips, spend their 18-hour nights. She tracked a radio signal to a tiny crevice in a birch tree, and in the morning saw the bird blast out of it. Before that, nobody had documented where these guys survived nights that can get down to minus 56 (the coldest temp. I've seen in 21 years, during the snap of '89).

Susan has experimented with woman-made roost designs and found a 3 inch plastic PVC pipe with insulated ends is the one black-caps seem to prefer. You drill a precise 1-and-1/8th inch hole in the plastic and fill it with wood chips, which satisfy the chickadee's desire to escavate, Susan says.

On a daddy-daughter night, Anna and I made one. She mostly pulled stuff off tables while I ran the cordless drill.

Anyhow, we got 'er done and now the roost is hanging on a spruce tree only about 20 feet from the house. Is a chickadee in there tonight, shivering itself warm? I don't know. Tomorrow I'll keep an eye on the hole about an hour before sunrise, at 8 a.m., when it should be light enough for those guys to show. Will a tiny body come shooting out of that hole, ready to face the day?