Fledge Labs is a small American conservation-engineering company making the most thoughtful nest boxes on the market — engineered to the millimeter for specific species, printed from recycled plastic, and built to outlive every wooden box on the shelf.
Fledge Labs started in a backyard, with a wooden birdhouse that rotted out after two seasons and a question that wouldn't go away: why is every birdhouse on the market built from the same trees the birds need to nest in?
Cedar, pine, redwood — they're the trees cavity-nesting birds depend on in the wild. Logging them to make backyard décor is backwards. The birds we want to attract lose habitat with every board we cut.
I'm an engineer. I have a 3D printer. So I started building. I wanted a house that lasted decades, not seasons. One that fit the species I actually saw at my feeder. One that was made from something I'd rather see kept out of a landfill — recycled PETG, the same plastic that bottled the water I drank that morning.
After a year of test prints, broken parts, and watching House Wrens, Bluebirds, and Tree Swallows colonize the iterations that worked, the system that became Fledge Labs took shape: three cavity sizes, three open shelves, one modular plate-and-panel system that lets a single body host different species across different seasons.
Now I'm building it for everyone else who's tired of cheap birdhouses, the ones that warp by year three and don't fit the actual birds at your feeder anyway. I want to give back to the organizations doing the real conservation work — Audubon, American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab — by funneling a portion of every drop their way.
— Craig, founder
Designed and printed in the United States.
Every species needs a different entrance hole, a different interior, a different mount height. Every Fledge kit is built for a specific bird — not a generic "small bird" guess that ends up as wasp habitat. Our species data is sourced from NestWatch (Cornell Lab) and the North American Bluebird Society.
Every body prints from rPETG — recycled polyethylene terephthalate glycol. Bottles, food containers, and old clamshell packaging diverted from landfills, cleaned, and extruded into filament. It's the same plastic that's safe for food contact, weatherproof for decades, and — critically — not a tree.
We aren't selling birdhouses to feel good. We're selling them to do good. Each limited drop is paired with a conservation organization — Audubon, American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab, regional bluebird societies — and a published percentage of revenue goes directly to them. The math is on the drop page when each release goes live.
Every part of a Fledge kit is engineered, printed, packaged, and shipped from the United States. The filament we use is sourced from American recyclers when available. Supporting domestic manufacturing means a shorter supply chain, less shipping carbon, and dollars that stay in the communities that grow the movement.
Whether you're a birder with a question, a conservation organization that wants to collaborate on a drop, or a maker who wants to print one for their own backyard — reach out.
Get in touch