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In winter, it is not easy for the feather to obtain food for himself under the snow. They can be helped by making a bird feeder with their own hands. Bring this exciting occupation of your children to this. In the process of working together, children can be told how important it is to feed birds in the cold time, what food should be poured and what birds arrive at the feeding trough in winter.
Why is it important to feed birds in winter?
Ornithologist scientists quote such figures: out of every ten tits for winter, nine perished, mostly from hunger. Metabolism in birds is designed so that they need to eat during the entire daylight hours, and in the cold, it takes more calories to sustain life. The well-fed bird keeps the heat until the morning without problems, and the hungry have little chance to survive the frosty night. Especially little food is in the second half of winter, when most of the berries and fruits are already eaten or covered with snow.
The feeder device is quite simple, making it yourself, you will save a lot of bird life, if you do not forget to fill it in time.
What birds can be seen in the winter on the trough
In the central part of Russia more than ten species of birds fly to the feeding troughs. In cities more often there are tits, sparrows, pigeons, crows. In large parks, gardens, on the outskirts or in the countryside, you can see woodpeckers, goldfinches, waxwings, nuthatches, bullfinches, sap and many other birds on the feeders. The most frequent visitors to the bird's canteen are the tits - big with a yellow breast and black and white Moscow and their nearest relatives - the azure and prince.
A fast food trough from a plastic bottle
Despite the unpresentable appearance, the troughs of plastic bottles are most often seen on trees. They can be made from any container, but it is better to choose a transparent plastic so that you can see how the feeder is emptying. They have many advantages:
- Unnecessary plastic packaging is found in any household. Instead of replenishing them with a garbage can, you can do a useful thing.
- To produce such a feeder you only need a kitchen knife or clerical knife and a piece of rope. You want to do as carefully as possible - mark the line with a marker and give it to the children - let them draw the future feeder. Such a beautiful bird's dining room will be clearly visible on white snow, and you will not miss it when you add food.
- Feeder from plastic bottles can be made several - different shapes and types. Carefully watching the birds arriving, you can see the shortcomings in the design and without problems to make a new one.
And, finally, a person with any skills can easily and quickly make such a manger. Children of adolescence can be instructed to make them themselves.
Thoroughly rinse the containers out of strongly smelling liquids. Birds have a delicate sense of smell and a pungent smell can scare them away. It is better to take a container from bottled water.
The simplest option is to cut a large hole in the side wall of the bottle. It should not be done too high, so that the feeder does not become a trap. To the bottom should remain a few centimeters. The lid on the bottle should be left to prevent snow and rainwater from entering through the neck. Choose a place for the feeder so that cats and other animals can not jump into it from the ground or climb through a thick branch. At the same time, the bottle should be well fixed.
There should always be a variety of food in the food trough. Make sure that the food does not stop.
Interesting and convenient is the design of several inverted bottles, mounted on a wooden pallet. It allows you to simultaneously feed more birds with different feeds.
How to make a manger from a tree
Surely you already made a few pieces of plastic bottles and hung them in a park or your garden. Now you can take on a more complicated task and make a bird feeder with your own hands made of wood. The simplest and most accessible material for it is plywood. It is durable and resistant to moisture. For work you will need:
- a sheet of plywood of suitable size;
- wooden slats;
- pencil;
- a jigsaw;
- a hammer;
- nails or screws;
- screwdriver or screwdriver.
Plywood should be cut into a jigsaw by the dimensions shown in the photo below. To such a bird feeder it is desirable along the perimeter of the bottom to beat the laths so that the feed does not spill out of it. Plywood can be replaced with fiberboard, OSB or hardboard.
The assembly should be carried out in the same sequence in which the house is erected. The bottom is screwed to the bottom, then the pediments. A roof is attached to them. Provide fasteners to a tree, pillar or any other tall structure.
The dimensions in the picture are approximate, and you can change them, but it is undesirable to make a large feeder with one corner posts, so that it does not turn out like the photo below:
For the same reason, you should not attach your artwork directly to the tree trunk or a thick branch.
What food do winter birds need?
Now you can make any bird feeder with your own hands. It remains to learn how to fill them and how to prepare food so that the birds are happy.
Collect food for birds can start as early as summer. Collect and dry the seeds of watermelon, melon, sunflower, pumpkin, hemp. All the seeds should not be fried. In the case will go crushed dried up white bread, cottage cheese mixed with dried bread so that it does not stick together, unsalted fat, acorns, clusters of mountain ash, viburnum, elderberry. For grain-eating birds from the autumn dried bundles of weeds - nettles, swans, burdock, horse sorrel.
If you can not prepare the food in advance, ready-made grain mixtures for parrots and other ornamental birds will do.
You can not pour salty and spoiled food into the troughs, including putting salted bacon, moldy bread, millet, fried sunflower seeds. Black bread, pies, belyasha and pizza are also not suitable.
Having made a bird feeder with your own hands, you will save a lot of birds, and you will meet the spring for their cheerful singing. And in the gardens and parks they will help get rid of the many pests in the trees.
