Abstract
Americans spend over $54 million each year on backyard birdfeeding stations and more than $ 500 million on bird seed.
Now the Fish and Wildlife Service has a way for you to build your own winter feeding station for next to nothing.
In fact, the Interior Department agency's two new novel birdfeeding designs can help make a big dent in your load of trash, as well as supply you with quick and easy crafts ideas for schoolchildren.
Where the price of many commercial bird feeders often start at $10, these two designs can be built for about a dollar, depending upon the household materials and simple tools you might already have at hand. Both feeders can be built in about an hour.
The first, a sunflower feeder, will draw chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals, and other winter residents, according to Fish and Wildlife biologists Alex Knight and Willard M. Spaulding, Jr., who created the designs. The other, a smaller, thistle seed feeder, is popular with goldfinches, wild canaries, pine siskins, and redpolls.
"A person doesn't have to be rich to enjoy the wealth of America's wildlife,'' says Fish and Wildlife Service Director Robert A. Jantzen. "With a little ingenuity, anyone can bring wildlife to the back doorstep, opening a whole new world for adults as well as children. These two birdfeeders provide a window on that world that's quick and inexpensive. It even helps solve the dilemma of what to do with those throwaway bottles.''
Directions for each feeder follow, illustrated with step-by-step instructions on pages 16 and 17.
Sunflower Seed Feeder
Materials needed: Three 2-liter plastic soft-drink bottles, a 7-inch dessert topping lid, a baby food jar lid, a coping saw, a single-edged razor blade or "X-acto" knife, all-weather rubber sealant, 8 inches of wire or monofilament fishing line, a small nail or 7 /16-inch bit and hand drill, a metal or wood screw.
Soak a 2-liter bottle in warm, soapy water to clean inside and remove label. Pull off the colored plastic base, but save it for use as a measuring device when cutting the feeding holes.
Step 1: Using a second 2-liter bottle, make a perpendicular cut with the coping saw at the bottle's mouth down to the point at which the neck collar begins. Make a second cut at, and slightly above, the collar perpendicular to the first cut. Discard the cut piece. Cut the remaining section of the neck and collar away from the bottle, leaving at least a I-inch flange of plastic beneath the collar. Using a third 2-liter bottle, repeat these same steps. The two spouts that result will be used as feeding holes, with their neck pieces preventing seed spill-out.
Step 2: Cut two I -inch circular holes across from...