DIY feeding station for birds
10.11.2020
Translation: machine translated
My children love watching animals in the garden. A bird feeder is a wonderful joint craft project to encourage them in their care and curiosity.
"When it's cold in winter, the birds need food from us humans," my son said to me the other day when I picked him up from nursery. He asked me to make something so that the birds would continue to visit us.
Said and done. The result was a colourful feeding station made from wooden sticks.
It is important to know that native birds are on the lookout for food sources in winter. If you start feeding them, you should do so consistently and daily until the end of winter. The birds rely on their feeders and could otherwise starve to death in a very short time.
What you need
For the colourful bird feeder, you will need lots of popsicle sticks, finger paints for painting (alternatively acrylic paint), a hot glue gun, string, a piece of felt and birdseed (sunflower seeds or similar). You can use brushes, a glass of water, scissors and possibly a painting apron for the children.
How to build the feeding station
Your children can start by painting the popsicle sticks different colours. If you don't have enough colour or time, you can also paint just one side of the sticks.
Connect the hot glue gun to the power supply and wait until it has warmed up. For the base, place as many sticks together as the individual sticks are long (about 11 sticks). This gives you a square. To fix them in place, place a stick across the top and bottom and glue it on with the hot glue gun.
Pay attention to the safety of your children when using the hot glue gun. If you don't yet trust them to use it, it's better to do this step yourself.
To provide the birds with a kind of perch, attach a stick twice as wide to each side. You can either use two narrow sticks for this or, like me, have a few wider sticks lying around at home.
Now you can start building the wall: Glue two sticks to the long sides and then two sticks to the short sides. Repeat this step until you are happy with the height of your feeding station.
For the cosy inner part, lay out the felt on the inside and glue the edge to the topmost popsicle sticks. To finish and as a kind of railing for the birds, glue on another round of popsicle sticks.
To hang up the bird feeder, thread the string through between the top and second-top popsicle sticks on all four sides. Then fill it with bird food and put it in the garden.
I also built a feeder for the ground because my children think that the baby birds can't fly so high up the tree. We are curious to see which of the two feeders will be eaten first. Have fun copying it.
I'm more of a thinker than a doer. Yet I'm still always active: crafting, sewing, writing to-do lists, daydreaming, counting clouds, digging into soil, comforting my two little ones and collapsing into bed after a long day. If it were up to me, each day would have a few extra hours... I wonder if that would be enough.