Building Birdfeeders For The Brainless

In a previous episode, Sharon was madly trying to figure out a way to make birdfeeders that just about anyone could build. Meanwhile, LuAnn and Lorenzo were about to finally admit their feelings for each other when Bubba walked in with the pitchfork and the cheesecake...whoops, wrong story.

There is some good news to report though. Renie Burkhard, a fellow editor here at Suite 101 (you must check out her work, she's great) writes about nature so I figured she'd know something about bird feeders and I was right. So here's what Renie told me about making bird feeders out of a 2 liter pop bottle.

"Basically, you cut small, round holes in the bottle, insert long sticks across for perches, fill with seed and hang it up."

You'd think even I could figure that out, but you'd be wrong. Renie was sweet enough not to say "think about it for a minute, dingbat!"

You'll need some sort of punch tool to make the holes for the perches. A corkscrew might work. I'm doing this the low tech way for a reason. Sure, I could use my husband's drill but I don't think he'd appreciate me taking his Makita drill and using it on a pop bottle. A knife or box cutter would work for cutting the holes but be careful not to cut yourself. While the birds may appreciate your efforts to feed them, they don't like you enough to call 911 while you're bleeding all over the place.

The long sticks don't have to be very wide; about the size of the stick from a sucker or ice cream bar would do it. Alas, I have yet to run across an ice cream bar whose stick would be long enough to cross the interior of a pop bottle. I guess I just have to keep trying different kinds of ice cream (a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it). Sticks from your yard might be just the thing or you could go to the craft store and see what they have.

I asked Renie about making feeders out of gallon milk jugs and she said "the milk bottles, you may want to cut out a large piece at the bottom and put seeds in there." Again, another "think about it a minute" idea. So what I'm going to do is a variation of the pop bottle plans, except I'll cut a hole in a couple places for the birds to eat through and then I'll put a perch under the hold. I scrounged a stick from the yard and that should work as a perch, or you could always hit the craft store.

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