Homemade Winter Bird Feeders: Four Builds Worth Doing

Field notes from the kitchen table on a Sunday in December.

The short version: four homemade winter feeder builds work well enough that we use them alongside our commercial feeders. (1) Drilled hardwood log packed with peanut butter mix - the woodpecker favourite. (2) Pine cone rolled in peanut butter and seed - the kids’ project. (3) Half-orange shell on a stake - for the warmer parts of winter. (4) Mesh produce stocking filled with sunflower hearts - a goldfinch sock for fifty pence. Total kit cost across all four: about £8.

Why bother building when commercial feeders work?

Three reasons:

1. Calorie density. A homemade peanut butter / suet / oats mix has higher fat content per gram than any commercial suet cake we’ve tested.
2. Cost. Four DIY feeders cost less than one mid-range commercial feeder.
3. Project value. Building feeders with a child is a small, useful seasonal ritual. We do it the first week of December and it sets the winter rhythm.

The downside is that homemade feeders aren’t as durable as good commercial ones - expect to rebuild each one once or twice across a winter. That’s part of the deal.

Build 1: Drilled hardwood log

The single most-used feeder in our December garden. Woodpeckers and nuthatches treat it like a real tree trunk.

Materials:

• A 30 cm length of hardwood (birch, oak, ash) about 8 cm in diameter
• A 25 mm drill bit
• Screw eye and chain to hang
• Homemade peanut butter mix (recipe below)

Build:

1. Drill 3-4 holes about 25 mm deep into the log at staggered heights. Don’t drill all the way through.
2. Screw the eye into the top end.
3. Pack the holes with peanut butter mix using a butter knife.
4. Hang from a chain on a tree branch, 5-7 feet off the ground, ideally with no nearby perches for starlings.

Refill: Once a week in cold weather; the birds will empty the cups in about 5 days.

If you’d rather buy than build, the commercial equivalent is the Songbird Essentials suet log we recommend in best winter bird seed - we use both, the homemade for the deepest winter, the commercial for the rest of the year. Either way the log shape works because woodpeckers and nuthatches cling vertically as if to bark.

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Build 2: Pine cone rolled in peanut butter

The classic children’s craft, and the one that works fastest.

Materials:

• A large open pine cone (Scots pine, white pine, sugar pine - any species with wide-open scales)
• Twine or jute string
• 100 g natural unsalted peanut butter
• 50 g black-oil sunflower seed or sunflower hearts

Build:

1. Tie a length of twine to the top of the pine cone.
2. Smear peanut butter onto the cone scales, working it into the gaps with a butter knife.
3. Roll the cone in a dish of sunflower seed so the seed sticks to the peanut butter.
4. Hang from a branch.

Lifespan: A pine cone feeder is taken in 30-60 minutes by squirrels if they’re confident, or about a day by birds if they’re not. The whole thing is a winter snack, not a structural feeder. Make several, hang in different parts of the garden.

Caveat: This is the most squirrel-vulnerable build. Use a squirrel-proof option (see best squirrel-proof bird feeders) if squirrels dominate your garden.

Build 3: Half-orange shell on a stake

A small, tidy feeder for the milder parts of winter. Best for mealworms and small fruit.

Materials:

• A whole orange, cut in half and scooped clean
• A bamboo skewer or wooden kebab stick
• A handful of dried mealworms (rehydrated in warm water) or sunflower hearts

Build:

1. Push the bamboo stick through the rim of the orange half (one side to the other) so the orange hangs.
2. Tie a length of twine to the stick.
3. Fill with mealworms or sunflower hearts.
4. Hang from a low branch.

Lifespan: The orange shell will last about a fortnight before it dries and cracks. The mealworm refill goes faster - days at most.

What it brings: bluebirds, robins, and Carolina wrens love it. Chickadees take from it occasionally.

Build 4: Mesh produce stocking for sunflower hearts

A 50p goldfinch sock made from a supermarket produce bag.

Materials:

• The mesh bag oranges, garlic, or onions come in
• Twine
• 200 g sunflower hearts

Build:

1. Twist-tie or knot the bottom of the mesh bag closed.
2. Pour in 200 g of sunflower hearts.
3. Tie the top with twine.
4. Hang from a tree branch.

The mesh holes are usually exactly the right size to let goldfinches and siskins extract one seed at a time. This is genuinely how nyjer “thistle socks” sold in shops work - same principle, much cheaper version.

Lifespan: Two weeks if the rain doesn’t wet the seed. Bin it and rebuild when the seed gets damp.

The peanut butter mix recipe

The mix that fills builds 1 and 2:

• 1 cup natural unsalted peanut butter (read the ingredients - the only word should be “peanuts”)
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup mixed wild birdseed
• 2 tablespoons rendered suet OR coconut oil, melted

Warm the peanut butter and fat together until they just loosen. Stir in the oats and seed. Press into the drilled log or smear onto a pine cone.

The salt question is genuinely important - supermarket peanut butter is full of salt and salt is dangerous to small passerines. The full case is in feeding birds peanut butter.

The placement still matters

Even a perfect homemade feeder fails if it’s hung badly. The same placement rules apply as for commercial feeders - see best place for a bird feeder for the full five-rule breakdown (window distance, cover distance, height, sun and wind, squirrel jump radius).

And the seed itself has a shelf life. If you’re prepping homemade feeders in November using seed bought in September, check it hasn’t gone rancid - see bird seed shelf life for the smell test and storage protocol.

What we'd skip

A few “homemade feeder” ideas circulate online that we’d avoid:

• Plastic milk jug feeders. They work, but plastic in a garden degrades to microplastic and the cut edges are sharp on bird feet.
• Cookie-cutter “bird seed ornaments.” The corn syrup binder that holds them together is harmful in quantity.
• Bread-and-bacon-fat feeders. Both ingredients are harmful for the reasons we covered in can geese eat bread - salt is the problem.
• Coloured popcorn / coloured rice “decorations.” Food colouring near birds is a no.

Stick to the four builds above and you’ll have winter feeders that work, look nice, and don’t introduce anything harmful.

The bottom line

Four cheap builds, ten minutes each, work alongside whatever commercial feeders you’ve got. Together they cover the calorie demand of a hard winter - which is what feeder feeding is really for. The peanut butter log is the single one to build first if you only build one.

For the full case on winter feeding and which calories matter, see best winter bird seed; for the full backyard setup that ties feeders, plants and habitat together, see how to attract common backyard birds.