Shopsmith Forums

Does anyone have some bird feeder designs/plans/ideas they can share? I see tons of bird houses but haven't found a bird feeder design to my liking so far...I'd like to make a few for my new house with my kids and hopefully find one I like enough to consider making a bunch to have stockpiled as gifts.

I've made a few but since the squirrels moved in I've given up on wood structures.

One that I liked a lot was a piece of birch with the bark on. Drilled holes and then mixed peanut butter and seeds to fill the holes. Loved to see the chickadees landing on it! Got the birch in WI, my brother had a permit to collect it.

I've also made ones like above but used 2 x 2's and roosts.

Another was a simple tray with a center tube you filled with seeds. The bottom of the tube had small openings for the seeds to come out and worked by gravity feed.

Back in my youth I would do bird houses and feeders that looked like the owners house, mostly in an artistic way. That was custom work and I got a few extra $$ for that.

Anyway it might be easier to sit down with some paper and pen and sketch up some ideas on you own... got any budding artists in the family? Got neighbors with feeders? Take a walk around and see what they might have.

Ed

Of course you know nothing is simple. Do you want to make a suet feeder, or a finch feeder (they take a slit for Thistle seeds)? If you don't mind the squirrels getting into your feeders, a flat platform with edges on a pole or hanging from a limb works nicely. I've made suet feeders out of redwood that hang from a limb. Hardware cloth is used to secure the blocks of suet.