Photo by Chris Bosak
A white-breasted nuthatch takes a sunflower seed from a homemade platform feeder in March 2017, in Danbury, Conn.

I know I’m not breaking any ground with the design of this homemade bird feeder, but figured I’d share it anyway. I’ve been wanting a platform feeder for a while now. The ones I made last year simply by cutting a thin section of a tree trunk with a chainsaw worked for a few months, but I didn’t treat them and they dried up, cracked warped and eventually fell apart.

On to plan B, which was to check out some offerings at stores. I saw one I liked but its design was so simple I couldn’t justify spending money on it. So I mulled it over and procrastinated for a long while before heading into the basement to sift through the scrap wood left by the previous owners of the house.

Almost right away I found an old, wooden cabinet door. The bottom (or inside) already had two thin pieces of wood running near the edges. All I had to do was add two more pieces to close the box and keep the seed contained and I would be done. Just as easily said than done.

The only tricky part was getting it to hang straight, or at least relatively straight. The small chain I used at first just wasn’t cutting it. It would hang low on one end so I’d adjust the links and only make it worse. So I dug out some old carabiner/keychain tchotchkes and linked the same number on each side of the feeder. It still didn’t hang perfectly straight, but that’s fine because I like it slightly angled toward the house anyway. Also, the angle will allow for drainage in heavy rains. (I love when I can justify flaws in my creations.)

As you can see, it’s also a fairly sizable feeder so I can offer a variety of foods at once. It’s working great already and I look forward to sharing photos of future visitors. It’s got rose-breasted grosbeak written all over it. Time will tell.

Photo by Chris Bosak
A white-breasted nuthatch takes a sunflower seed from a homemade platform feeder in March 2017, in Danbury, Conn.