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Making A DIY Plastic Bottle Feeder

I was very excited to welcome the first day of spring, which arrived this past week! Unfortunately, I had a problem. This whole week has been super windy, and one of my feeders, which I’ve had for probably ten years, was knocked down and the base literally broke off, leaving a hazardous broken edge. Obviously, I didn’t want to just hope my birds wouldn’t cut their feet on it, so I took the nearest feeder material – a plastic limeade bottle – and set out to make a replacement that would attract every bird in the neighborhood. Here’s what I did!

The base of my feeder – or what’s left of it!

I had never made this type of feeder before, and there were no ‘how-to’ videos about making one out of a limeade bottle on the internet, so I decided to take inspiration from the classic bottle-and-spoon feeder, and wing it from there. I don’t have any experience with power tools, so I got some help with cutting four holes on each side. Two sides were for bigger birds, with a perch farther below the seed openings, and the other two were for small ones, with perches closer to the holes. I also had the narrow top cut off, to make filling it easier.

Limeade bottle marked with Sharpie where I planned to cut.

The next step was to make the perches. I was going to use wooden spoons like the traditional spoon-and-bottle version, but it turned out they didn’t fit the holes, so I used un-sharpened pencils instead. They actually fit pretty well! That one used the spoon shape to catch any seeds that fell from the holes, but since mine didn’t use spoons, I couldn’t do that, so I attempted putting something there to do that instead. That didn’t work, and as I was using large sunflower seeds and my feeding ports were pretty small, I decided it would be fine without.

Now it was time for the final touches! I strung a cord through two of the seed openings to hang it from, and then to spruce it up, decorated it with some ribbon bows.

The finished product!

And there you have it! I’m pretty proud of it, though it looks a little scrappy due to my relative inexperience with making feeders like this. I don’t have any photos of it hanging, but I’ll provide those once I get some!

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Enjoying Winter Birds

Welcome to the debut post of this blog! I hope to continue it for many years as I expand my birding skills and experience all sorts of new things in the pursuit of birds! I’m Sydney, the MN Birdwatcher herself! Welcome to my brand-new blog abut my adventures in birding here in central Minnesota – I can’t wait to share them with you!

House Finches, though not native to the eastern US, are a common bird in Minnesota.

My yard certainly doesn’t look like a very interesting place to go birding right now; outside my window there’s snow, ice, and not much else. But my feeders have a steady stream of common birds a lot of birdwatchers might be tempted to ignore- dozens of Black-capped Chickadees; foraging House Sparrows; the occasional flock of American Goldfinches, colorful Northern Cardinals, or American Tree Sparrows – it can seem dull at first glance, but when I have the patience to sit, wait, and observe what there is, I remember how fascinating the winter residents of my yard are. Though they aren’t as flashy or colorful as the spring migrants or summer nesters we all remember so fondly around this time of year (forgetting, remarkably, about the rain, heat, bugs, and whatever else tries to prevent us from going out and birding for most of the year), I love my winter birds!

American Robins may be associated with the arrival of spring, but some may stay up north all winter, if they can find enough food.

For example, whenever I come out to fill the feeders, a flock of chickadees will start to make noise around their favorite feeder, and one or two will remain while I fill it. When I’m done, the rest of the chickadees will all swoop in as soon as I’m a safe distance away, and dig in!


And that’s just one example of the wonderful birds I share my yard with, even in winter. I’ve also been seeing a Brown Creeper (a cute brown bird that climbs around on tree trunks, like a nuthatch – I recommend looking it up online if you’ve never seen one) on the trees in my yard for the past few days, which is great because not only do I love watching them, I also didn’t know until then they even lived here during the winter. I also saw a pair of Yellow-shafted Flickers (my favorite woodpecker!) eating hackberries from a tree in my backyard yesterday. It seems like all sorts of birds love those – I’ve seen cardinals, robins, and Cedar Waxwings, as well as Downy, Hairy, Red-bellied, and even Pileated woodpeckers eating them in the past. I’m happy my yard can be a safe home for so many amazing birds, summer and winter!

I occasionally see huge Pileated Woodpeckers, like this hungry female, snacking on hackberries in my backyard alongside more regular visitors.

Thanks for reading! I’m so excited to continue sharing stories from my backyard and things I’ve learned well into the future!