This easy homemade bird feeder uses just four items to create an instantly usable bird feeder that many birds and other wildlife love. If you have small children at home, this is also a great winter-day craft, something to do when you have a few minutes and a few stale bagels around.

What? Bagels never get stale in your home? Ha, they don’t get stale here either – we’re too busy eating them! But you can find stale bagels on the “thrift” (i.e., stale products) shelf at the grocery store or Wal-Mart. You may also want to ask at the local bakery or bagel store if they have any stale bagels they’re throwing out. Just be sure to tell them it’s for an arts and crafts project and not for dinner and they’ll probably give them to you, or give them to you at a discount!

Feeding Backyard Birds

You can feed wild birds at any time during the year. It’s a myth that feeding birds during the spring and summer months will make them dependent on a feeder for food. Wild birds have evolved for many thousands of years with a strong survival sense, and they’ll seek seeds elsewhere if your feeder is empty.

In the meantime, however, a full feeder attracts beautiful, colorful wild birds to the garden. I love watching birds from my kitchen window. The backyard bird feeder is positioned so that from my seat at the kitchen table, I can watch the birds fly from the peach tree in the yard to the feeder hanging from the fence around the vegetable garden. During the summer months, hummingbirds frequently visit the gladiolus flowers growing against my house under the kitchen windows, and other birds like to use the backyard fountain near my patio for a little bird bath. There’s always something to see from the kitchen table!

When you make this bird feeder with your children, not only will they complete an enjoyable craft project, but you may also encourage in them an appreciation for wildlife and nature. Once they hang up their own bird feeder – one they made all by themselves – they’ll be excited to see which wildlife visits it!

Make Your Own Bird Feeder: Easy Homemade Bird Feeder

To make this homemade bird feeder, you will need just four items:

• A stale bagel, cut in half so that it is flat on both sides.
• About 1 cup of wild bird seed
• 2 tablespoons of smooth or chunky peanut butter
• String or ribbon

You’ll also need newspapers to protect your table and a plate and knife. Parents should cut the bagel in half and determine what kids can use to spread peanut butter – a spoon or a butter knife works fine.

Spread the newspapers over your work surface. Place the bird seed on the plate and set aside. Take the string, ribbon or yarn, and cut a piece about 1 foot in length. Run the end of the string through the hole in the middle of the bagel and tie it around the bagel. Next, spread the flat surface of the bagel with peanut butter. Then smoosh the peanut butter side into the bird seed, making sure to coat it as evenly as possible. With a parent’s help, use the string or yarn to hang the bagel seed feeder up in a tree in your yard. Instant bird feeder!

Don’t be surprised if squirrels find your bird feeder, too. They may enjoy a taste of stale bagel. Birds will peck off the seed and perhaps the peanut butter, then work their way down to the bagel itself.

This and other information to help you enjoy backyard bird feeding is included in my ebook, and paper back book, Attract Birds to Your Garden. The ebook is just 99 cents and available to download in your choice of formats from Smashwords or Amazon. Paperback is available from Amazon. Enjoy!

Purchase My Book from Smashwords or Amazon

Just .99 cents for the ebook

Welcome to My New Readers!!!

Wow! We have reached over 100 followers on Bloglovin. Thank you for taking the time to subscribe to Home Garden Joy. Did you know that…

• I’m currently offering a free Christmas inspirational story on Smashwords? It’s called The Christmas Fox and it is absolutely free to download your copy of the ebook!
• You can sign up for our monthly newsletter, too.
• You can find free monthly gardening tips on the site too. Download each month so you know what to do in your garden, and when to do it.
• I have free tutorials and presentations available on growing African violets, planting a butterfly garden, and growing Christmas plants like amaryllis and Christmas cactus. You can find them on Slideshare.

Enjoy!

 

You can create a backyard bird sanctuary. Learn more about attracting wild birds to your garden.

Growing up in the suburbs of Long Island, I took wild birds for granted. It always seemed as if birds were signing outside of my bedroom window in the morning. Cardinals, blue jays, robins sparrows, starlings, mourning doves, pigeons, seagulls…these were the birds I saw daily, frequent visitors to our lawn, garden, bird feeders and bird baths. My mother taught me the names of all the birds as she pushed my stroller around town while she ran errands (we only had one car when I was a kid, and my dad drove it to work, so my mom walked everywhere.) I just took it for granted that birds were everywhere.
Now fast forward to our move into Seven Oaks back around 2007.  Our home was built on the remnants of an old farm, and the builder cleared three acres of loblolly pine trees to build our home and plant grass for us. The day we moved into the house, we threw open wide all the windows to air it out and enjoy a breeze on an unseasonably hot day.

I listened carefully but heard nothing but the wind soughing through the trees. I turned to my husband and said, “I don’t hear any birds!”

It was true. The woods were eerily silent. For months, we waited in vain to hear birds. Gradually we realized that several things had happened:

• The managed forest of loblolly pine trees provided such a monoculture that most species of birds could not forage for food or nesting materials; our woods were very quiet because the birds went elsewhere!
• The home construction and heavy machinery probably disturbed all the local wildlife, who moved away from the noise, hustle and bustle deeper into the woods.
• The big open meadows around our house, without any perching or screening areas, meant that the birds avoided the area instead of visited it.

 

By the next year, we began seeing colorful goldfinches on the sunflowers and pecking at the seeds from the Echinacea; soon, phoebes, crows, and many other birds arrived. The cardinal, Virginia’s state bird, began frequently the hardwood trees we left growing among the loblolly, and the addition of trees, nesting boxes and small garden areas on the lawns provided hospitable areas for bluebirds and other small birds. Today, our garden teems with wildlife attracted to the various trees and shrubs, as well as amenities such as bird baths and bird feeders added to the area.

The moral of the story: you do need to cultivate a habitat that birds feel safe and comfortable in if you want to attract birds to your garden.

Creating a Backyard Bird Sanctuary

I’ll never take birds for granted again after that experience. It’s one of the many reasons that I wrote my book, Attract Birds to Your Garden, and why I’m passionate about adding wildlife sanctuary areas to your yard – no matter how small a yard you may have.

Start Your Bird Sanctuary

You can transform even the smallest yard into a wild bird sanctuary. The key, as I learned from my experience, is to start with the basics. The following simple guidelines will help you assess your garden and begin transforming it into a backyard bird sanctuary. In subsequent posts, I’ll share more tips for creating a garden habitat that birds will love, as well as tips for feeding birds over the winter.

Assess your current yard.

• Do you have spaces for birds to perch on, such as mature trees?
• Do you have shrubs that provide privacy and hiding spots?
• Are there evergreens for winter coverage?
• Have you planted any flowers that produce seeds for birds, such as sunflowers or cone flowers?
• Do you have any spaces where you can hang a bird feeder, such as from a limb on a dogwood tree or another smaller tree?
• Can you put up a bird house of some kind?
• If you have a bird feeder, are you keeping it filled with seed?

Birds, like people, love variety. By filling your backyard with a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers, and a variety of habitats as much as space allows, you’ll welcome birds into your garden and find it filled with their beautiful song.

 

My book, Attract Birds to the Garden, is just .99 cents on Smashwords as an ebook, available in your choice of formats. It is also available as an ebook from Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other online stores, and in paperback format from Amazon.  It will tell you how to cultivate a garden that becomes a backyard bird sanctuary, how to choose seeds to feed birds and more. Purchase a copy from your favorite book seller or wherever fine books are sold.