D.I.Y. Backyard Bird Feeders
We are working on turning our backyard into a bird sanctuary...one bird feeder at a time. Okay, so I use the word "sanctuary" loosely as it is set by the standards of a mom and her two kids under five. And we are no expert bird watchers either. But we sure are having fun lately trying to figure out who is eating our seed. Who knew backyard bird watching could be such a thrill? Certainly not I. But here I am calling all the birds to my backyard and waiting at the window to see who will appear. I don't know who is more excited when they do show up, me or my kids. : )
Below I will step you through how to make a simple sweet D.I.Y. bird feeder. And one the kids can help with every step of the way at that. I will give you a few other ideas along the way too. But if you want to jump right to it, scroll down ; ).
In case you missed the post, this all started with our homemade birdseed ornaments that we set out during the holiday season. It felt so good to start the conversation with my kids about giving back and the ornaments looked so beautiful around the back yard. The only problem we ran into there was the overpopulation of squirrels in our neighborhood. I don't know that the birds even had a chance!
Shortly after this, we had a lot of snow fall and couldn't resist getting out to play. I began showing my son how to create land art, by creating lines and other marks in the snow. We created a giant sun by dragging our feet along. What a stunning view from our window on such a cold day! The sun then froze and became somewhat engraved into our snowy grass for quite some time. This gave us the perfect surface to decorate with the warm tones of birdseed. An interactive art piece that kept on giving in so many ways.
This piece brought quite a variety of birds and squirrels and really got us thinking about what type of birds were in the area. Once you start looking it's hard to stop. We checked out a field guide from the library and soon realized our most common visitor is the dark-eyed Junco. My son now refers to this sweet little bird by name when he sees them, and that really makes me smile! ... And now onto the most recent feeder today.
We are super excited about the way our D.I.Y. bird feeder came out today! I just so happened to have a ton of craft sticks that were gifted to me. So when I ran across a tutorial on how to make an easy bird feeder out of these I was all in. After a few modification for structural purposes we had ourselves a super cute and functional bird feeder.
http://www.tonyastaab.com/2011/06/x-treme-bird-feeders.html
Start by laying 7 sticks side by side, topped horizontally with 2 sticks laying across them to create a platform.
Glue 7 more sticks vertically aligned, on top of this platform to create a solid base for the feeder.
Alternate sticks around the base once, gluing them in place.
Glue one stick, half in and half out of the frame, to create a perch for the birds
Keep gluing and alternating sticks around the base until you reach the desired height.
The instructions had said to then use a hot glue gun to secure a long piece of twine to the middle of the underside of the feeder. I could not for the life of me find my hot glue gun so I used a thin piece of black electrical tape to secure it.
After this you were supposed to thread the twine through the top row of sticks and tie it together in a knot to create the hanging device. I found that when I tried to fill the feeder with seed and then pulled up on the string to hold it, the sticks began to come apart a bit because let's face it glue sticks just aren't that strong!
So I had take two more strands of twine and basically tie the sticks together on either end of the feeder, looping and and knotting until it felt secure. Not too hard - just have to use your own judgement there depending on how high your structure is. Because of course the higher the structure, the heavier the seed, the more securing you may have to do!
All in all, I would highly recommend giving this one a try. We propped a large fall branch securely near our back picture window and hung the feeder there. So excited to see if we get any takers tomorrow, as we will have such a gorgeous up-close view.
Wish us luck! And let us know if you give this one a try!
