One of our sons really wanted to have a bird feeder. He tried a number of ways to make his own. One of those was peanut butter and raisins.on a toilet paper tube, that one didn’t attract any birds. He also convinced Lynn to buy a large bag of bird seed, which he put some of in a container on our picnic table. That idea did attract some birds, but they pooped on our table. Personally, I find that to be less then optimal.
Because we had the bag of seeds, and I wanted to help him out I decided to look up how to build a bird feeder. I wanted to find one that I could make out of materials I had on hand so I wouldn’t have to spend any money if it didn’t attract birds. After looking at many pictures online, I found this idea to make a bird feeder out of an old bottle. It is a simple idea and is easily customized to the materials you have on hand.
I found an old San Pellegrino bottle in the recycling bag, all I had to do was remove the label.
I also had some scrap wood sitting around that I was able to cut to the right sizes. The original place I got my idea just had two pieces of wood screwed together. I always build stronger than that so I cut some angled pieces to go under the horizontal board for strength. After screwing the wood pieces together, I painted them with primer to help protect from moisture.
Then I drilled holes in the vertical board where the bottle would be hanging from. I don’t have any specific measurements for where to put the holes. It will depend on the size of the bottle and backboard that you use. The original plan called for wire to hang the bottle, but all I had was garden twine. The twine works just fine (haha a rhyme), but will not last as long as the wire would.
Last I took an old 4×4 that was in the yard when I moved in and buried about a foot of it in the ground, then I attached the bird feeder boards I made to the 4×4.
The hardest part might have been filling the bottle with bird seeds. I think the easiest way is to make a funnel out of a piece of paper and dump the seeds down that into the bottle.
The feeder does attract birds. So far I have only seen doves drawn to the feeder, but it is fun watching the doves sit on the feeder and eat the seeds. This is an easy project that I think just about anybody can do. There isn’t a need for any specialized tools. In fact, if your boards are already the correct size then all you need is a drill.
-Joshua