Pipecleaner Bottle Bird Feeders

This kids craft is a great way to recycle plastic bottles all year round. These Bottle Bird Feeders are simple to make and add lots of color to your garden!

Most winters, I find myself thinking about birds. As the snow and ice begin to blanket the yard, I always catch myself wondering about the countless birds that spent their spring and summer hanging out in my garden.

As I made my way through the grocery store the other day, I spotted a few bags of bird seed, but my cart was already stuffed to the brim with toilet paper and paper towels. I didn’t really have any room left, so I abandoned the bag of seed, but felt a little guilty.

One part of my mind reasoned that the birds would be fine. They weren’t going to starve just because I didn’t have any room left for wild bird seed. After all, they are wild birds. It’s not like I was forgoing food for a pet parakeet.

The other part of my brain was convinced I would wake up in the morning to find my yard littered with poor little frozen starved birdy bodies. As I loaded my packages into my car, I realized I could have squeezed the bag in somewhere.

My drive home was consumed by thoughts of what birds really eat in the winter, especially when there is snow and ice on the ground. I really had no idea what they eat, so I looked it up.

According to Wildbirds Unlimited, birds really do need help finding food in the winter. Their natural food sources have already been eaten or are covered by snow and ice. Plus, any insects that they liked to eat are now dead or dormant, and water can be quite difficult to find.

So what’s a bird lover like me supposed to do? Well, birdfeeders can be incredibly helpful and placing them in both trees, and on the ground, make the seed available to a larger variety of birds. It’s also important to situate feeders out of the wind and in an area that has a decent amount of shelter from the wind and weather conditions.

Suet is also a great food to offer birds in the winter. It is high energy and a pure fat substance that provides the birds with essential nutrients during the colder months. The extra calories in suet will help the birds stay warm during frigid temperatures.

After finding out all of this information, I knew what we would do. We would spend the afternoon making a pipecleaner bottle bird feeder for our little feathered friends. You most likely have all of the materials in your home already and this kids craft is a fun, colorful way to recycle plastic bottles and keep your backyard birds fed this winter.

PIPECLEANER BOTTLE BIRD FEEDERS

Materials:

• Empty plastic bottle
• Pipecleaners
• Stick
• Serrated Knife

Directions:

Step 1: Rinse clean your plastic bottle. I used an old sports drink bottle. The flat sides were much easier to carve the opening for the bird seed into. With a serrated knife, have an adult cut a rectangle out of the side of the bottle. Poke a hole under the rectangle for the stick perch.

Step 2: Have your child create a very long string of pipecleaner. Have them twist the ends together to create a colorful length of pipcleaners.

Step 3: Unscrew the bottle top. Twist the first piplcleaner around the bottle neck, tightly twist the cap back on securing the end of the pipecleaner at the top of the bottle.

Step 4: Wind the length of pipecleaner around the bottle until you reach the bottom of the bottle. Twist the last piece of pipecleaner under the overlapping pipecleaners. Insert a craft stick or tree branch into the hole for a perch.

Step 5: Fill with bird seed and hang from a high branch where predators can’t reach the birds.

Thanks for reading,
Daniele

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