There is something quietly satisfying about watching a blue tit cling to a homemade feeder, particularly when the feeder in question started life as a milk bottle destined for the recycling bin. You do not need to spend forty pounds in a garden centre to bring birds into your patch. A few basic tools, a clean plastic bottle or an old teapot, and half an hour on a Saturday morning will do the job nicely. Better still, a homemade feeder is cheap to replace, easy to clean, and honest about what it is.

Why Recycled Feeders Are Worth Making

Shop-bought feeders are perfectly good, but they have two drawbacks. The first is cost. The second is that birds are fussy about design in ways manufacturers do not always anticipate, and a feeder that does not suit your garden will sit there half-full for months. Making your own lets you experiment — widen a hole, add a perch, change the height — without spending a penny.

A recycled feeder also puts a genuinely useful item back into service. Plastic bottles, chipped teapots, old colanders and even wire coat hangers can all be turned into something a robin will use. The trick is to get the details right: drainage, perches, and a hanging point that will not give way in a February gale.

Before You Start

• Wash everything thoroughly in hot soapy water and rinse well. Old containers can carry mould spores and bacteria that are harmful to birds.
• Avoid anything that held chemicals — bleach, weedkiller, antifreeze, engine oil or cleaning products. Food containers only.
• Check the glaze on very old ceramics. Vintage teapots and jugs occasionally contain lead-based glazes, so use them as planters rather than feeders if you are unsure.
• Use galvanised garden wire or strong twine, not thin household string, which perishes within a season.
• Watch sharp edges. Cut plastic can be surprisingly vicious. If you are making this with children, do the cutting yourself and let them do the decorating.

The Plastic Bottle Feeder

A two-litre bottle with a screw-top lid makes the simplest reliable feeder. A clear bottle is best, as you can see at a glance when it needs refilling.

• Remove the label and any glue with warm soapy water.
• Mark four spots around the bottle, roughly 5cm up from the base, spaced evenly.
• Push a clean bamboo cane, a wooden dowel or a sturdy stick right through the bottle so it protrudes about 8cm on each side. These are your perches.
• Just above each perch — about 3cm up — cut a circular hole roughly the size of a two-pound coin with a craft knife, working on a chopping board. The seed spills down to the perch level where birds can reach it.
• Pierce five or six small drainage holes in the very bottom so rain does not pool and turn the seed mouldy. This single step makes the difference between a feeder that lasts and one that turns into a soggy mess.
• Thread wire through two holes near the neck, or simply wind it tightly around the neck below the lid. Keep the lid on to shed rain, and unscrew it to refill.

If you would rather have a feeder that empties itself slowly into a tray, cut the base off, invert the bottle, and rest the neck in a shallow plant saucer. Hang it from the cut end with wire. This holds more seed and suits small birds that prefer to feed from a flat surface.

The Old Teapot Feeder

A teapot with a chipped spout is ideal. Drill three or four 3mm drainage holes in the base using a tile bit and a slow speed, keeping the bit cool with a drop of water. Thread galvanised wire through the handle and again between the spout and the body to keep it level, then hang it upright from a branch or bracket.

Leave the lid off and fill the pot with a seed mix or dried mealworms. Birds will feed from the wide rim, and a few will poke their heads into the spout. Rest the lid at a slight angle in wet weather to act as a roof. Hang it about 1.8 metres up, clear of any branch a cat could use as a launchpad.

What to Put In It

Not all bird food is equal, and some of it does real harm.

• Sunflower hearts are the best all-round choice. No husks, no mess, and almost every garden bird will take them.
• Dried mealworms or soaked ones bring in robins, wrens and blue tits, especially in cold snaps and through the breeding season.
• Niger seed attracts goldfinches, but needs a fine-port feeder to work well.
• Fat balls are excellent winter fuel, but take them out of the plastic netting, which traps birds' feet and tongues.
• Avoid bread, milk, salted or roasted nuts, cooking fat, and anything mouldy. These can make birds ill or worse.

Put out only as much as gets eaten in a day or two, and always provide a shallow dish of clean water nearby.

Siting, Cleaning and Safe Feeding

Position matters more than most people realise. Place feeders within a metre or two of a window, or more than three metres away — the middle distance is where window strikes are most likely. Keep them close to a hedge or shrub so birds have somewhere to dash if a sparrowhawk appears, but with a clear flight path in.

Clean your feeders every fortnight with hot soapy water, rinse thoroughly, and let them dry fully before refilling. In damp spells, clean weekly. Sweep up spilled seed from the ground to discourage rats, and move the feeder to a new spot if the ground beneath becomes fouled. Rotate two feeders if you can, so one is always clean and dry.

Do all that, and a bottle you were about to throw away will give you goldfinches on a Sunday morning, a flock of starlings in a January frost, and the small, steady pleasure of knowing you built it yourself.