DIY Bird Feeder from Recycled Materials

A Simple Way to Help Garden Birds Through the Cold

By the time the first hard frost arrives, the berries in the hedgerow have been stripped and the ground is often too hard to probe for insects. The blue tits, robins and sparrows that visit your garden have less food and fewer daylight hours in which to find it. A feeder made from packaging that would otherwise go straight into the recycling bin can make a genuine difference to whether they see the spring. It costs nothing, takes about twenty minutes, and gives you a front-row seat to some of the best wildlife television you will ever watch.

What You Will Need

• A clean 2-litre plastic drinks bottle, or a 4-pint plastic milk bottle
• A skewer, a bradawl or a sharp pair of scissors
• A wooden spoon, a length of dowel or a bamboo cane, about 20cm long
• Strong garden twine, thin wire or a length of cotton string
• A metal washer, and a little waterproof tape
• Bird seed — sunflower hearts and mixed seed work well

One important rule: never use a container that has held bleach, weedkiller or any other garden chemical. You cannot guarantee that the residue will rinse out, and birds are sensitive to even tiny traces. Drinks bottles and milk bottles are ideal because they are food-safe.

Making the Bottle Feeder

Start by washing the bottle in hot, soapy water and peeling off the label. Leave it to dry completely, then make four or five small drainage holes in the base. These let rainwater escape, which keeps the seed inside dry and stops it going mouldy after a wet night.

Next, make two feeding holes roughly 5cm up from the bottom, on opposite sides of the bottle. A hole about 1cm across is right — wide enough for a beak, small enough that the seed trickles out slowly rather than pouring onto the lawn.

Now push your wooden spoon or length of dowel straight through the bottle, just below the feeding holes, so an equal length sticks out on each side. Those two ends become perches, sitting at exactly the right height below the seed openings. Trim anything longer than about 10cm so the feeder does not swing about too much in the wind.

Thread your twine through the cap. Put a washer on the inside of the cap, pass the string through it, and knot it firmly — the washer stops the knot pulling through when the feeder is full and heavy. Alternatively, tie a loop tightly around the neck of the bottle, just under the cap, which spreads the load even better.

Fill the bottle about two-thirds full and hang it up. As the birds feed, the seed level drops and you can top it up without taking the feeder down — a funnel made from a rolled-up piece of paper makes this much easier.

An Even Easier Milk Bottle Version

If you would rather not fiddle with perches, a 4-pint milk bottle makes a brilliant open feeder. Stand it upright and cut a rectangular window in the upper half, roughly 10cm by 8cm, leaving a lip at the bottom to stop the seed spilling out. Run a strip of tape around the cut edges to cover anything sharp.

The handle is now your hanging point, so thread twine through it and knot it securely. Pierce a few drainage holes in the lowest corner, fill the base with about 3cm of seed, and hang it from a branch or bracket. This design suits larger birds such as starlings and house sparrows that find small ports awkward, and it is easy to shake clean each week.

Siting It Well

• Hang it 1.5 to 2 metres from a hedge, shrub or tree, so small birds have somewhere to dash for cover if a sparrowhawk appears.
• Keep it at least a metre off the ground — low feeders are an open invitation to cats.
• Position it away from windows to reduce the risk of collisions, and somewhere sheltered from the prevailing wind.
• Choose a spot you can see from the kitchen window. Half the pleasure is in the watching.

Once birds find the feeder, keep it topped up. It is far kinder to feed consistently through the winter than to fill it in a burst of enthusiasm and then leave it empty for a fortnight.

Keeping It Clean and Safe

A dirty feeder spreads disease, particularly the trichomonosis that has hit greenfinches hard in recent years. Wash yours every fortnight or so — more often in mild, damp weather — in hot soapy water, using an old bottle brush to reach the corners. Rinse thoroughly, allow it to dry, and move it to a fresh hanging point now and then so droppings do not build up underneath. If you notice a sick bird at the feeder, take it down for a fortnight, clean it, and start again.

Good things to offer include sunflower hearts, nyjer seed, kibbled peanuts, suet balls and dried mealworms. Leave out bread, milk, mouldy leftovers, and salted or dry-roasted nuts, all of which can harm birds. A shallow dish of fresh water is just as valuable as food in freezing weather — pop a small ball in it to keep a patch of open water, and never add salt or antifreeze.

Winter Watching

Hang your feeder, step back, and give it a few days. The first visitor is usually a great tit or a blue tit, arriving cautiously and then returning every few minutes once it has decided the contraption is safe. Within a week you may have a queue. Keep a notebook by the window and jot down what you see — it is a lovely thing to do with children, and a quiet reminder that a garden in January is anything but empty.