00:00Thank you for listening.
00:52So hello my friends and welcome to another video.
00:55I hope the new year is off to a fantastic start for you all.
01:00Today what I thought I would do is show you how I make the two types of bird feeder that
01:07I use in my garden.
01:09The first being a suet and seed feeder and the second being a peanut feeder.
01:17So you might wonder why I'm showing you how to make one and that's because basically in Greece I can't
01:22actually get hold of the ready-made ones from the shops.
01:25They don't exist here.
01:27Even finding seed that's appropriate for wild birds is difficult here actually.
01:34So hence I make my own.
01:37And I thought you might be interested to see how I do that and it might be a fun project
01:40for you to do at home as well.
01:43So like I said I'll start off with the suet and seed feeder.
01:48So what I use for this is lard, seeds, I mash up some peanuts as well to mix into that.
01:58I pour it all into a mould which in my case is this old plumbing pipe, a hundred mill plumbing
02:05pipe, which I then hang from the tree with some jute string and balance it all on this little bit
02:13of a slice of a log from the fireplace that I cut.
02:19Okay so first step is to actually melt the lard, which I will do on the little gas stove here.
02:35Okay so once that's all melted, I pour it into the bowl and then I just pour in the seeds
02:44and the nuts.
02:52So, you usually use about half a kilo of seeds.
02:59You need to mix it all up.
03:07And make sure that the seeds are soaking up all the lard, that there's no
03:18excess lard floating around.
03:26And once that's all mixed up nicely,
03:31you need to let the lard start setting just a little bit.
03:36Because what happens is if you try and pour it straight into the mould,
03:44if the lard is still too hot, then it starts dripping out of the bottom and we don't want that,
03:52we want it to be
03:55solidifying around all the seeds to hold them all together.
03:58Okay so that's firming up nicely now, so it's not likely to dribble out the bottom of the mould.
04:06What I do is I take the mould and a little bit of greaseproof paper, which I line it with,
04:15and then I just start spooning it in.
04:34Once that's still pliable, in order to be able to put the string through it, I have just a little
04:39rod,
04:39anything will do, which I force through the middle to make that hole.
04:50And then this will go in the fridge for a couple of hours and it will be solid as and
04:55ready to hang.
04:57I'll just go do that and I'll be back and I'll show you the other bird feeder I make.
05:03The second bird feeder that I make, I use this chicken wire and it has, the mesh has enough
05:12opening for the birds to be able to peck at the peanuts and not enough that they will fall through.
05:22So what I need to do is I usually model it around a bit of a slice of my firewood.
05:31So I just take the measurement of that and then cut a strip out according to that size.
05:45So this takes a little bit of time. So I won't bore you with the whole thing. I'll cut it
05:51out and then
05:52I'll come back to you once I've done that. Okay, so once you've cut out your bit of mesh,
06:00you'll find that the ends are quite sharp and frayed.
06:04And what I do is I remove one line of wire from it, which I then basically sew it,
06:13sew the edges together with it. But before I do that, I hammer over the frayed ends to try and
06:23keep
06:24the shape and make sure there's no sharp bits sticking out basically for the birds.
06:32Okay, so that's made. I hammered in the slice of log to the bottom of it. I stitched up the
06:43seam, if you like, with another bit of wire, literally just stitching it up as I went and
06:48tightening it. I've finished it off with a thread at the top here, which I'll tie the string to and
06:57hang it from. So all it needs is just filling up with peanuts, putting the lid on it, which is
07:05just this
07:06funnel, and then hanging on the tree. And hopefully the the suet one has solidified now, so I'll go get
07:16that and fill this one up, and we'll go hang them on the tree.
07:46Okay, so I just retrieved the
07:48the suet and seed block, which is now a nice solid block.
08:12I'm going to thread this end through the suet block.
08:18And that just sits on there. Now nicely supported and ready for the birdies.
08:25So let's go and hang those up.
08:27and check them out.
08:55I'm going to turn it over.
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