WILD! How I made a tray feeder for wild birds...

This morning my niece posted on Facebook about a type of feeder that she wanted to order from Wild Birds Unlimited

and I had been thinking of a similar type of feeder for my back yard because the BlueJays and some of the other larger birds could not access the round tube feeder that I have there....

So, as you know, I occasionally go off on a "tangent"!  Well this was definately a tangent! And took me less than an hour to put together, including locating the 'elements" or you might call it the materials and supplies...

I used things that I found around my house, yard or basement.  I spent not one PENNY!

I had an old office magazine holder thingy that I took apart to use the mesh screen of it for the bottom of the 'feeder' so that rain would not puddle in the feeder and ruin the seeds...

the wooden box is one that I picked up along with some other plant containers just to use in my garden....

an old electrical extension cord that for some reason didn't work 

The Tools: a screwdriver and pliers to take apart the magazine holder, heavy duty scissors for cutting the pug ends of the extension cord, my father-inlaw's electric drill from the 1950's that still works -- but you can use a newer one if you want!,  and a hammer to bash out the bottom of the wood box...

First I took apart the magazine holder thingy but didn't bother to cut or change its shape as it fit nicely to the bottom of the box and allowed a kind of ledge on the outside edge...  And bashed out the bottom of the wooden box, which was pretty easy to do as it was actually water warped and a bit rotted...

Did I mention the staple gun and staples?  I used the kind of staples that they use for upholstry, not the kind for paper... much stronger!  staples in the corners and two on each side edge...

 Once the bottom was on - I put the bottom on so that it would make the box a bit stronger so that it wouldn't go off square when I drilled holes beside the corners...

Then I cut the plug ends off the extenion cord and pulled the two long plastic coated wires apart so I had two long and strong cords to put thro the holes in the side of the box -

tied the 4 loose ends up into a knot and hung the thing on a bracket on my fence....

Hanging on the bracket with seeds in it...

took barely 15 minutes and the first visitor arrived -- a chickadee!  I think he was a regular visitor to our tube feeder so he knew where he could find LUNCH already!

and another chick-a-dee a few minutes later 

The last two photos are taken with my canon power shot at 14x zoom from the second storey balcony on our house.

Now I am going to have to keep an eye out for the blue jays and maybe some other of the larger birds in our neighbourhood...