Lee Harps

A week or so ago, I was informed by my wife (she who FEEDS and waters the birds), that the bird feeder was no longer in good health and it might be good of me to replace it. A new feeder has been built, MOSTLY for the birds, but also in response to my wife’s request.

When my father was still living, he always had a round, squirrel resistant bird feeder just outside his front door, the construction of which always fascinated me. In the past 10 years or so, I’ve tried to copy his ideas for our bird feeders. This is not a great photo, but this is a distant photo of the one that was “failing”.

Here is the one I have spent the past week building as a replacement for the one above:

In this one, I have again used redwood for the shingles, pressure treated southern pine for the post mounting, fir sheathing plywood for the round base and roof bottom, maple for the ball on the top, a bit of cedar for the round piece under the ball, 1×2-inch wire for the squirrel barrier and copper tubing for the posts and the circular perch. I have recycled the bird seed bin in the center from the original feeder. Here you can see some of the detail of the construction:

Corresponding holes in the two plywood circles permit the ends of the 1 x 2 inch wire to create a fairly successful squirrel barrier. In the past feeders I’ve built, the 8 vertical posts around the outside were made of wood. Seems the squirrels felt that, if they chewed them off, they could access the bird feed inside. I had to replace them several times! I’m waiting to see if they have copper filings on their teeth now that I’ve used copper tubing for the posts on ths feeder! I have also replaced the original round wooden “perch” with a circle of 3/8″ copper tubing. The shingles are made of redwood, all cut out with a taper on the bandsaw, then the widths tapered to fit the cone shape of the roof. I have used building cement (in a caulking gun) to install the shingles. Here is a photo showing the interior of the lid:

Having also learned from past feeders that the squirrels will chew their way into the interior of the feeder by removing the shingles, I have installed aluminum over the “rafters”, to which I have glued the shingles. There is NO WAY a squirrel can chew thru that! If they decide to try, I’ll just have to install more shingles, I guess. If you notice, the seed bin extends up into the roof, thus making the filling of it a less frequent necessity. The roof hinges at the back and the lower ends of the “rafters” rest on the upper sheet of plywood when the lid is closed, thus keeping the lid flush with the body of the feeder. Also a new addition to this feeder, I have installed eyelets and a chain to act as a “stop” when the lid is opened for filling the feeder:

On the previous feeder, the roof overhang simply rested on the vertical posts in the back, and consequently damaged the shingles and the posts.

And, there you have it: probably the most brief entry I’ve made to date.

Now you can understand why the French Harp is on hold. Winter is coming….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Diggin' Dirt, Doin's In the Workshop, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.