Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Frugal Living => Topic started by: sarah1983jane on October 23, 2012, 15:55
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I really fancy some more wild bird feeders but the price of them is really putting me off!
Does any one have any ideas for some DIY feeders?
Thanks
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There could be some great ideas, this should be interesting! :D
We've made a sort of suet cake, for want of a better word, in the past where you melt the suet to liquid in an enamel dish or similar and then fill it to what seems like saturation point with wild bird seed. Once cooled and solidified, you can either put it out in little bits or the furred wildlife would probably eat it overnight, or use small dishes (or half coconut shells :D) and put string or wire in whilst it is liquid - a bit like adding the wick to a candle.
:)
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similar to the suet cake above but drill largish holes in a log, say inch or two inch dia and same deep, stuff holes with suet cake mix and hang from trees - attracts woodpeckers and tits etc
R
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Heres two I made earlier ::)
The second one was made to hold poultry grit but can be filled with bird seed and tied to a tree or fence. :)
Both work well but are easily trashed by squirrells.
(http://i49.tinypic.com/z69ex.jpg)
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2q1ayl3.jpg)
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Spana, I like both of these but the grit one I could use with my Chooks. What a great idea, thank you for posting up. ;)
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Wickes, B&Q etc, all do square meters of various size mesh and you can make ooodles of feeders for not a lot.
Cheers, Tony.
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Fab, I am going to go for a walk to find some logs I can dill out to fill with suet cake tomorrow! Love the plastic feeders....will be saving up milk bottled and yoghurt pots. Thank You
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Fab, I am going to go for a walk to find some logs I can dill out to fill with suet cake tomorrow! Love the plastic feeders....will be saving up milk bottled and yoghurt pots. Thank You
How did you get on with your log feeder?
I made one this morning after reading your post. We had a tree come down a few week ago which I thought would make a great place to start. Here is the results.
(http://img14.imagefra.me/i5as/darronbarnes/iqh7_2ad_u2sja.jpg)
I put the roof on to stabilise the log and stop the suet mix from being washed out. I also made a plate for the back out of a small piece of sheet metal which I drilled a key hole for the screw to sit in when hanging.
(http://img14.imagefra.me/i5as/darronbarnes/iqh7_896_u2sja.jpg)
Mrs bainsk8 and myself are very happy with the results, we just hope the birds are. I still have to make a grit dispenser for the chooks.
The suet mix I made is as follows:
Sunflower Seed
Meal worm
Oats
Suet
Does anyone have another recipe for us to try? We had thought about adding some Raisins and will do this next time.
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I'll be interested to see how you get on with oats in your mix, as we found our wild birds didn't particularly seem to like them. They prefer straight wild bird seed, which we buy in larger bags 12 point something kg or 20 where available locally to us. :)
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Yes I will report back. I didn't want to use wild bird seed because we used it in one of the other feeders and the birds never touched it, same with peanuts. They do go made for Sunflower kernels. The neighbour recommended peanut butter, but we have to buy this in to try it.
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That's interesting, how do you present the peanut butter? :)
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I guess you would use it instead of the suet, messy business! That said it would be interesting to see if the birds eat it especially after not touching the peanuts.
We do have hedge sparrows in the area and it would be nice to find something they would like.
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Our main garden flock here is house sparrers. We have dunnock too among others, but they are shy. :)
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I just had to Google search 'dunnock' not only have not seen them but I had never heard of one before.
I must confess my knowledge of birds is very limited and I would probably mistake the dunnock if I saw one as a sparrow. I would need to get the binoculars out and keep flicking through the pages of our little Observer book to get it right. That said we were uncertain if the Goldfinches we get in the garden were indeed Goldfinches or a member of the Tit family, 8doubles corrected us on that one in another post on the forum. Silly mistake now looking again at the Observer book.
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Yes dunnock is hedge sparrow. :)
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Hedge sparrows are not very competitive and i have yet to see one on a bird table or feeder, they tend to skulk about on the ground picking up what the other birds drop.
I have an irritating hedge sparrow that builds nests on top of nest boxes i have provided. ::)
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Yes dunnock is hedge sparrow. :)
Hahaha! You got me. :D
I have an irritating hedge sparrow that builds nests on top of nest boxes i have provided. ::)
Hahaha! This is also funny, its like moving into a new house only to sleep in a tent in the garden. :lol:
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wehad snow so I didnt get out but went to a car boot today and bought a fab bird feeder for only£5, The guy seemed to be one of those people who likes making stuff out of wood and was just experimenting, I will go back next week and see if he will make me some more matching feeders!
Going to try peanut butter and sunflower cake next week for the birds
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Sounds good Sarah, keep us updated on how you get on with the Peanut butter and Sunflower cake please. I would be very interested to know what takers there are.
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Sounds good Sarah, keep us updated on how you get on with the Peanut butter and Sunflower cake please. I would be very interested to know what takers there are.
Bainsk8 - Our garden birds are so fascinating to watch - I can spend hours just observing them. I have attached a link to the RSPB bird identifier which you might find useful.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdidentifier/
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That's great Springlands, thank you for the link. Once the kids are in bed tonight I will take a better look at the website.
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You are welcome Bainsk8. You might be interested to know that as part of this years Autumnwatch which starts on Tuesday on BBC2 there are webcams available through the red button on BBC1 and 2. I was watching for a while this morning - the webcam was focused on a bird feeder - and the number of birds that were visiting it were amazing. For part of the time there is a commentary explaining which birds were visiting - you and your family might find it really helpful. I think the webcams will be covering different areas of the forest so the birdfeeders might not be in view all of the time. It was the best daytime TV that I have seen for a long time. :)
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Springlands that does sound really interesting to watch, I will check it out tomorrow. I don't normally watch day time TV but this maybe the start.
The bird identifier on the RSPB website is fantastic, extremely easy to navigate to the correct bird. I have had quite a bit of fun playing with it, I didn't know that there were so many different birds that live in and that visit the UK. Thank you again for the link, mostly appreciated. :)
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You are welcome. I have watched birds for many years and there is still lots to learn. :)
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http://www.instructables.com/id/Soda-bottle-bird-feeder/
Just put wild bird feeder in the search bar, you will get loads come up, very good site for making stuff
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Springlands we hear owls in the evening from late Summer through Autumn and with the help of the RSPB website I have been able to identify them by listening to the sound clips. They are Tawny Owls, Mrs Bainsk8 and myself always wondered what owls they were, they are so nice to listen to.
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It really adds to the enjoyment if you can identify what you are listening to or looking at. Glad to be of help. :)
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I'm a newbie to the site and having just seen this thread I thought I'd pick up on it.
We made a bird feeder by rescuing a piece of pipe from a car mechanic's scrap bin (the pipe would have been for a car exhaust). It didn't cost us anything. We drilled a hole right through it and put in a bolt for the birds to sit on each side. The top and bottom of the new feeder was taken from an old, broken plastic bird feeder we'd once purchased (by this time we were a little fed up with the short life of these). The top and bottom fitted perfectly.
The new feeder is much more robust (we've had it for years) and, more importantly, the birds love it.