While I had a few days off around Christmas I finally tackled a little project I’d been wanting to do for a while, creating a few more bird feeders for the yard.  I had seen spiral copper feeders online and loved the simple design, so I did a quick search on Pinterest to find a tutorial and gave it a try.  I used small copper tubing, which is typically used for the water line on newer refrigerators.  It’s a soft metal so it bends very easily.  The tutorials I found suggested using a rolling pin to get the circular shape, but we don’t have one so I used a soda can instead.

I wasn’t able to get pictures during the process due to needing both hands and the hubs being busy with another project, but it’s really as simple as placing the beginning of the tubing against the can and pressing gently as you turn the can toward the tubing.  Once I had a spiral tall enough I snipped the tubing with wire cutters to make a clean end and wrapped that around the can as well to complete the final loop.  After I removed the can from the spiral I pulled the top loop up so it was perpendicular to the rest of the spirals so I’d have somewhere to hang the feeder from.  I stretched the spiral out a bit to make spaces between the loops and once I was happy with how that was looking, I curled the bottom loop a bit tighter so it could act as a stopper at the end.  I had enough tubing left over to make a second as well.  Here’s they arebefore I filled them.

I filled them with apples and hung them outside on the hooks where my hanging baskets go during the summer.  I haven’t seen any of the wildlife visit them yet, but it might take them a while to investigate and learn this new food source.  I’m considering making more of these for my Etsy shop, but am not sure if they would be big sellers or I they would ship well so I might post them on a few of the local buy/sell pages and see if they get any traction there first.

I continued my DIY feeder making roll with this simple S hook orange feeder. The hubs drilled a hole in a piece of drift wood from my stash and I positioned it where I thought it would work best as a perch then added a bit of hot glue to keep it in place. We could have just made the hole smaller to begin with so the perch would fit snuggly but I didn’t want to risk breaking it when maneuvering it on the hook.  I cut an orange in half and just stabbed it onto the end of the hook.  The hubs enjoyed cleaning up the other half of the orange so it didn’t go to waste.

This one hasn’t had any visitors either from what I’ve seen, but I’ll leave it up for a while to see if the birds and squirrels find it just like it did for the peanut ring feeder which I filled while I was at it.  This continues to be a huge draw for both squirrels and birds so I might just let it run empty to encourage them to explore the other new feeders.  If I still don’t see any traffic at them in a few weeks I might switch to using homemade suet balls or blocks instead of fruit and see if that’s more appealing to our neighborhood’s critters.

I picked up this store bought feeder several weeks ago and placed it farther down the fence from the peanut feeder so the smaller birds would have somewhere to eat when the squirrel is devouring the peanuts. The perch is on a spring that can be adjusted to different tensions for different sized birds and pulls down over the openings if there is too much weight, such as a squirrel, which was the main selling point for me.  Plus I like the bright red, barn style too!  I’m still playing with the different spring settings to see which works best for our area’s flock since it didn’t come with instructions or info other than the price tag, but I have seen groups of chickadees sitting on the ledge and pecking at seeds so it must be appropriately set for them.  And because it has such a large reservoir, it hasn’t needed filling since I put it up so it’s perfect for the far area of the yard where we don’t often go.

Hopefully all of these options will make the birds stick around come spring, so they can keep the mosquito population in check allowing us to enjoy the deck more.  If you have any tips on how to attract birds to new feeders or suggestions for feeder styles that work best I’d love to hear them!