bird feeding station

[leon-b]

Hi guys,

I'm making a bird feeding station as my garden is coming along nicely and as the colder months are near i thought it would be a nice idea to build a little station for the bird feeding throughout the winter
Any body got plans for one like this ??
I have some 3x3 and a few other bits and bobs, and would prefer not to buy wood if i can avoid it
Any ideas about what to put in/on it would be great
Thanks

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by leon-b

Hi guys, my garden is coming along nicely and as the colder months are near i thought it would be a nice idea to build a little bird feeding station
Any body got plans for one like this ??
I have some 3x3 and a few other bits and bobs, and would prefer not to buy wood if i can avoid it
Any ideas about what to put in/on it would be great
Thanks

hello Leon! How are you? not heard from you in ages it seems!!

Did you not build something last year?

I'm afraid I'm not a huge amount of use to you on this one... presumably you've tried googling for plans? I have lots for bird boxes but none for feeders.....

[eeyore]

Hi leon - basically i'd set a piece of 3 by 3 in the ground to act as a post - nail some cross pieces across it (like a crucifix) about 5 ft from the ground then hang feeders on the cross pieces

instructions for home made bird feeders below:

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyye...cm4-117828.doc
http://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/file...%20feeders.pdf
Making a birdfeeder for your backgarden: iVillage

Also if you can get a bit of ply or a slab of wood you could nail this to the top of the post to act as a bird table

[almostnormal]

the other thing you can use to make the top is an old tin/plastic tray. you drill drainage holes in it and then screw it to the top of the post. works quite well at the local primary school. they take turns to wash it!

[paulchandler6]

I made one quite a few years ago using a piece of 3 x 3 and 2 pieces of 1.5 x 1. Screwed them to the top in a cross and then put cup hooks in each end to hang feeders from. Simple but effective. Its still in use now but has taken second place to a new metal one.

Paul

[The Octagon]

I found this thread from a search after deciding that I would like to do the same sort of thing as Leon, the original poster. I want something similar to one of those metal bird-feeding stations that you can get from garden centres for £20-25 (i.e. a vertical metal pipe with a few curly hooks for feeders, a couple of brackets for a loose feed holder and a bird bath, a base and a fleur-de-lys finial). But I don't really want one of those identikit bits of metal, and am especially scornful of the ones that have an integrated fatball hook hanger, from which you are meant to suspend fatballs contained in evil plastic mesh, in an attempt to wound or dismember avian guests. I want something that I can design myself and modify as time goes on, so that it evolves organically into a grotesque Heath Robinsonesque structure -- the sort of thing that Johnny Kingdom might invent in a dream after eating a surfeit of cheese, chocolate and raw mushrooms on a restless summer night in Belgium. I think I want it to be made of metal and not wood.

My idea is that, within such places as B&Q/Homebase warehouses, there are probably the parts that I need to build my contraption, which were never intended to be used for constructing bird feeders. I am thinking particularly of plumbing supplies, for instance, which must offer a wide range of pipey bits, connecting bits, going-around-corner bits and brackets, which I could probably use to construct a feeder, with the aid of a hacksaw and a monkey wrench.

My problem is that I am almost completely ignorant of the suitability of the range of materials available in hardware supplies outlets, and I don't know what I need (if indeed it is available). I once made a set of wind chimes by buying a length of copper piping, cutting it into bits and carefully sawing slices off until I made a well-tuned musical scale, but my experience of getting the length of piping back home from the shop with it sticking out of the car window makes me think that copper would be too soft for my bird feeding station needs (copper piping collided with hawthorn bush at high speed, resulting in bent section of copper piping).

Does anyone, please, have any experience of building such a thing out of metal, or have enough hardware nous to tell me which types of materials I should go for, if they are available?

(Fleur-de-lys finial not essential.)

[ron1863]

I prefer to use natural wood e.g. I placed an old thick branch upright into the ground and drilled holes in it then I squeezed peanuts into the holes. I prefer this method for bird photography.