Building a Simple Bird Feeder from Recycled Wood

There's something quietly satisfying about feeding the birds from a feeder you knocked together yourself. It costs next to nothing, it keeps a few offcuts out of the skip, and within a week you'll have blue tits queuing up on it as if you'd bought it from a garden centre. The design below is a simple roofed tray feeder — the easiest sort to build well, and one that suits the widest range of garden birds. Give it an afternoon and a decent cup of tea.

Why Make Your Own?

Shop-bought feeders are perfectly good, but they're often made from thin timber and staples that give up after a couple of winters. A home-built one can be as chunky as you like. You can also size it to your garden: a small tray for a courtyard, a generous one for a hedge-backed plot in the shires. And because you know exactly what went into it, you can be confident there's nothing toxic in the finish.

Autumn is the ideal time to build. The birds are prospecting the garden for reliable winter food, and a feeder that's been weathered in by November looks like part of the furniture by the first hard frost.

Choosing and Prepping Your Timber

Look for untreated timber: offcuts of exterior ply, scraps of larch or cedar, or dismantled pallet wood that's stamped HT (heat treated). Avoid anything that's been creosoted, and be wary of old decking or fence panels that may have been treated with preservatives you'd rather not have birds pecking at. If in doubt, leave it out.

• Base: 200mm x 200mm of 18mm exterior ply or solid timber
• Roof panels: two pieces, 220mm x 150mm, same thickness
• Corner posts: four at 25mm x 25mm x 250mm
• Fixing: exterior wood screws (4mm x 40mm) plus a weatherproof D4 wood glue
• Finishing: an eye screw, a hanging hook, and a length of galvanised chain or wire

Sand the cut edges — splinters are hard on tiny feet. Drill four 6mm drainage holes in the base before you assemble anything; doing it afterwards is fiddly and risks splitting the board. If you want to protect the wood, brush on raw linseed oil or a water-based exterior stain. Skip glossy varnish, which flakes, and skip anything containing insecticide.

The Build: A Simple Roofed Tray Feeder

Mark out your base, then screw and glue the four corner posts to its underside, one at each corner, sitting flush with the edges. Drill pilot holes first — small sections of timber split if you drive screws straight in.

Now sit the two roof panels on top of the posts so they meet at the ridge and overhang the tray by about 25mm on every side. Fix each panel to the two posts beneath it. To close the ridge, run a bead of exterior glue along the join and screw a narrow strip of timber over the top, or simply overlap one panel slightly and seal the gap with a strip of flashing. A dry feeder means dry food, and dry food means no mould.

Finally, screw an eye screw into the centre of the ridge and attach your chain or hook. If you'd rather mount it on a post, drill a hole through the base and slot it over a 25mm timber upright instead.

Siting It Well

Position matters more than the joinery. Get it wrong and you'll either lose birds to cats or lose them to the kitchen window.

• Place it roughly 2 metres from a hedge, shrub or tree, so birds have somewhere to retreat to but cats have nowhere to lurk within pouncing distance.
• Set the tray at least 1.5 metres off the ground, higher if cats use your garden regularly.
• Keep it either within 1 metre of a window or more than 3 metres away. The middle ground is where birds pick up speed and hit glass.
• Angle it so you can watch from a chair without pressing your nose to the pane — you'll see far more natural behaviour.
• Move the feeder every few months to a fresh spot. It stops droppings and discarded husks building up in one place, which is the main route to disease.

Stocking the Larder

Sunflower hearts are the all-rounder: no husks, no mess, and almost every garden bird will take them. Blue tits, great tits, coal tits and the occasional long-tailed tit will be first in. Goldfinches and greenfinches favour nyjer or sunflower hearts, while chaffinches, house sparrows, dunnocks, robins and blackbirds will happily take a tray of mixed seed and a few mealworms on a cold morning.

Whole peanuts belong in a mesh feeder, never loose on a tray, and it's best to hold them back during the nesting season. Don't put out bread, milk, or salty and fatty leftovers. A shallow dish of clean water nearby will bring in birds that never visit the seed at all.

Keeping It Clean and Lasting

Scrub the tray every fortnight with hot soapy water, rinse thoroughly and let it dry in the sun before refilling. Clear away soggy or mouldy food the moment you spot it, and sweep up husks beneath the feeder now and then. If you see a bird looking fluffed-up and lethargic, take the feeder down for a fortnight and clean it properly — that's the single most useful thing you can do for your local population.

Give the wood a fresh coat of linseed oil each autumn and check the screws are tight. Looked after like that, a feeder built from scrap should give you a decade of company — and you'll never quite get over the first morning a goldfinch lands on something you made yourself.