Kid Craft: Bird Feeders

January 27, 2009

The snow and cold weather just keep coming, so Ayden, Sam and Claudia are sharing the bird feeders they’ve made. All are quick and easy and made from items headed to the recycling bin. Please remember that once you start feeding the birds, they will depend on you throughout the rest of the winter!

*First up, Ayden’s birdseed pie. It’s a homemade suet mixture inside a disposable pie tin. Ayden says this: “Here’s how you make the bird feeder. We took bird seeds and we took fruit loops and carrots and apples. We did bread crumbs. We put it in a birdseed pie. We had to put them in Crisco that was melted on the stove. A grown-up does that part but Mom let me stir it on the stove. After we stirred it up, we put it in the pie. Then we put it in the tree.”

*Claudia found a big plastic jug in the recycling bin and with a little help from Mom with the cutting, she has a quick bird feeder. This works great with gallon milk jugs, but we tend to crush ours before they hit the bin so we improvised with a syrup jug. We just cut a large hole in one side and Claudia filled it with wild bird seed and hung it up. Couldn’t be easier. We hung this one on one of the windows of our sunroom, so we might get lucky enough to do some winter birdwatching. The container and opening are large enough that we expect some of the little chickadees to be able to hop right in for a feast. Actually, if I had thought it out ahead of time, we would have cut a hole in the back of the jug too, so we could really get a look at the birds who visit the feeder.

*Sam’s bird feeder is also made from something headed to the recycling bin. A plastic water bottle makes a great feeder, but requires some adult help. You need to make small holes for perches to slide through and for the birds to pull the seeds from. These are about the same size as a small dowel or pencil. We found it was pretty difficult to make a neat hole with the newer water bottles since they are made of a thinner plastic. Dad ended up getting his dremel tool out and viola – instant holes. Sam used unsharpened pencils to slide through some of the holes to make perches. Be sure to make a hole about 1″ above each perch so the birds have easy access to the food.