Orange Bird Feeder

With Spring in full swing, we are doing all we can to get outdoors. If your backyard is anything like ours, we’ve been spending the last few weeks clearing out the winter weeds and making rooms for all kinds of Spring Awesomeness!!! One of our favorite parts in the Spring cleanup of the backyard is to make sure we’re welcoming the birds and butterflies back by clearing out their bird baths and bird feeders. The kids asked if we could make some new bird feeders as some of ours had seen better days, and so I shared with them how to make these fun orange bird feeders.

What was fun was telling them a funny story about their great-grandpa and birds and oranges. I feel extremely fortunate that I was able to know and spend some time with Craig’s grandfather before he passed. He was so warm, welcoming, and funny as all getup. One day during our visit to his house in rural Kansas, I noticed he had an orange on a piece of wood hanging from a tree outside his living room window. I asked him about it, and being the quick witted character he was, he immediate responded with a story about how the squirrels had brought the orange up the tree and built themselves a bowl and that they loved to collect rain or something to that extent. I listened so intently to his story. I was fascinated on how in the world the squirrels could get a full orange up in the tree and just had about a thousand questions about these genius squirrels.

Have I mentioned ever how gullible I am? So yeah, I’m super gullible and in combination with his super dry humor, that his grandson possess as well, where you can never really tell if he was joking or not (9 out of 10 times he was joking), I bought what he was selling with the squirrel. So funny! In any case, the real reason for the orange was that it attracted birds to his yard and he loved to watch them from his front window. I often think of Grandpa Emmett when I see birds in the yard and even more so with these fun orange bird feeders. Sure do miss him!

You will find with these bird feeders that not only do the birds come for the seeds, they also love the citrus. They are super fun to make with the kids and pretty easy! Here’s how you do it.

Supplies:

large orange
2 dowels (or straws work too)
yarn
bird seed
knife
scissors – these are my favorites

Directions:

First you start by cutting the orange in half. Using the knife and or spoon to remove the fruit from inside the orange peel leaving you with a orange peel cup. Using the dowels or straws, poke both through the orange out the other side of the orange crossing in the middle.

Next you cut two equal size pieces of yarn or twine approximately 1.5 feet long. Tie each end of the yarn to each side of the dowel. You then can hang the bird feeder at the top of both pieces of yarn.Lastly, you fill the orange cup with bird seed and hang. Just remind the kids to hold under the orange while walking around trying to find the perfect spot. Little hands can spill 🙂 Have fun!!