Tuffy P asked me to make a couple teacup birdfeeders for the garden. This involves simply drilling holes through cups and saucers and installing them on the end of threaded steel rods using nuts and washers. Here they are….
Tuffy P asked me to make a couple teacup birdfeeders for the garden. This involves simply drilling holes through cups and saucers and installing them on the end of threaded steel rods using nuts and washers. Here they are….
27th Street 
we don’t need to attract birds….we’re in what may be the most bird-full. Area of Toronto. Sam Smith Park is a major migration trap that attracts birders from all over the place. Mostly we’re simply enhancing the garden.
If attracting birds interests you I can offer 2 pieces of advice based on years of experience:
1. Buy a hummingbird feeder. These are the most fun you can have for a buck and in fact we bought ours from the local dollar store. It is el-cheapo plastic, red with 2 feeder holes and holds about 2 cups of liquid. Yes you can spend $100 on a hummingbird feeder but they dont work any better than the one from the buck store. Red is the key. You simply boil up a sugar/water solution, let it cool, fill the feeder and hang it from some place the cats cant easily reach and hummingbirds will find it almost immediately. We boil up the solution a quart at a time and store the surplus in the refridgerator. It usually takes the hummers 3-4 days to empty the feeder and we regularly get 2 hummingbirds at one at the feeder. I fist thought that the sugar/water thing couldnt be good for them but the opposite is true. Hummers feed on flower nectar because they need a huge amount of energy relative to their size to keep their wings going so fast and they actually need the sugar. They eat bugs to get their protein. Hummingbirds are I believe the only bird that can fly backwards and they just have to be the most fun to watch. They are also highly cat resistant because they dont land on the ground to pick up fallen seeds. Most folks think they have no hummers but a feeder for them dispels that notion right away
2. Feed exclusively sunflower seeds. All of the birds you would like to see love sunflower seeds. Cardinals, chickadees, goldfinches, the pretty grosbeaks, the upside down nuthatches. The typical mixed bird seed you get from the grocery store is pretty much useless. The birds pick out the small percentage of sunflower and kick the rest onto the ground where it germinates as weeds. The really cheap stuff that contains a lot of cracked corn is especially useless because only pigeons and doves will eat the corn and you wont see either at your feeders. Chickadees are one of my favorite birds because if you are really patient you can teach them to actually land on your hand and take sunflower seeds from it. After a while they will learn that it is you who supplies the seed and if the feeder gets empty and they see you they will come over and tell you in no uncertain terms that their feeder needs reloading. Kind of cool I think.