A Bird Feeder or Two

    I may have mentioned it before, but one thing when writing a blog about one's projects is that it provides a record of things that one has done.   It's almost like keeping a daily diary of one's life only in this case I omit all the fun stuff, the boring stuff, the have-to-do stuff, and focus on my shop-time stuff.  (Which as you may notice that since I haven't written for a few weeks there hasn't been a lot of designated shop-stuff time lately.   This was due to a little winter escape trip to Florida for a couple weeks.)  

   
    My neighbor was asking me if I would build him a bird feeder like the one that I had in my back yard.  I had to look back in the blog writings to see when I had done this and finely found it in a Dec.14th, 2011 blog.  I don't know why, but I had labeled the blog as if I was building a bird house.  (I was young and inexperienced at the time.)   This means that this feeder is well over 5 years old.   It has been attacked by several squirrels, a few raccoons, and once in a while a deer will nudge against the pole to try and spill a little seed out on the ground.  I hate to think of how many dollars of bird feed I have pushed through that feeder in the last five years, but we do see a lot of feathered traffic.

   I dug through the scrap wood pile looking for any small pieces of cedar wood that I could find.  Also since this project calls for Plexiglas I was surprised that I still had enough pieces of that laying around also.    In fact I had enough scrap stuff that I decided to build two feeders.   One for the neighbor and another replacement one for myself.

  There are several plans out there for building a bird feeder, but I do like the concept of how this one works.    You lift the top off - pour the feed in the middle part and slide the top back down.   Birds can feed from both ends.   Squirrels take a leap from a neighboring tree branch but when they hit that Plexiglas top they find it difficult to hang on and usually slide off.    The raccoons are the rascals.   They have discovered that they can stand in the tray and push up on the top they can sometimes get it off.

   And sometimes that just did not work for them so in their disappointment those raccoons would get a little destructive.   The old one in the picture above still works fine but has the Plexiglas cracked in a couple places and that is why I am thinking of replacing it.  There is another product that is stronger than Plexiglas, but it is quite a bit more costly.   It is a material that is used in Hog confinement buildings and other agriculture structures.  ( I'll just plan on building another feeder every six years.)

    There we go.   Two feeders.  I have given the neighbor his and he will wait till spring when he can pound a pole in the ground.    Currently I am researching methods or scents that I can apply to his feeder that will attract the raccoons and squirrels in his direction.  If you have heard of any such product, let me know.





 (I know...   It looks like a lot more cat food than you are used to getting.  And I know that there is more litter than normal for you to do your thing in.   But remember you need to allocate everything over a 14 day period so that you don't starve to death or run out of water while we are in Florida.   Make wise choices while we are gone.   And for whatever reason - Don't throw up any hairballs on the carpet during this absence.)