Why a Bottle Feeder Earns Its Place

A clean plastic bottle, a length of string and a bag of sunflower hearts will get you further than you might think. Bottle feeders are cheap, quick to make and genuinely effective, and they have one advantage over many shop-bought designs: you can see exactly how much seed is left without taking them down. In an Oxfordshire garden, a well-placed bottle feeder will pull in blue tits, great tits and coal tits within days, followed by goldfinches, greenfinches and the occasional siskin in winter. Nuthatches and great spotted woodpeckers will visit too, though they usually prefer a seed cake or a hanging peanut feeder alongside it.

They will not last forever. Sun makes the plastic brittle and frost cracks it, so treat a bottle feeder as something you make, use and replace, perhaps once or twice a year. That is part of the charm.

What You Will Need

• A clean 1.5 to 2 litre plastic drinks bottle with its cap. Clear is best so you can monitor seed levels and spot damp clumps early.
• Strong garden twine or, better, thin galvanised wire, which squirrels find harder to chew through.
• A sharp skewer, a bradawl or a small drill bit. An adult should do this part.
• A short length of bamboo cane or dowel, roughly 12 to 15 centimetres long, for the perch.
• Wild bird seed: sunflower hearts, a good mixed seed, or dried mealworms.

Wash the bottle thoroughly with hot soapy water and let it dry completely before you start. Residue from fizzy drinks or squash can go mouldy and put birds off.

Making the Feeder

Work with the bottle upright and the cap on. Make two feeding holes on opposite sides, roughly five to seven centimetres up from the base, about the width of a pencil. The seed sits in the bottom of the bottle and trickles down to these holes, so the exact height matters less than making sure the holes are level with each other.

Now make the perch holes. These go two to three centimetres below the feeding holes, straight through the bottle, so the cane passes cleanly through both walls. Push the cane through and trim it so a few centimetres stick out on each side. Birds land on the perch, lean forward and reach into the hole above. Get this spacing right and the feeder will work well; get it wrong and the birds will simply ignore it.

Prick three or four tiny drainage holes in the base of the bottle. Without them, rain will collect and turn the seed into a soggy, mouldy mess. Leave the cap on. A cap with a single small hole through it, threaded with your twine or wire, gives you a neat hanging point, but a loop tied tightly around the neck under the cap works just as well.

Choosing What to Put In It

Sunflower hearts are the single best choice for a bottle feeder. They are husk-free, so there is no mess beneath the feeder, they suit almost every species, and they flow well through the holes. A general mixed seed is fine too, though the birds will pick out the best bits and leave the rest to clump.

• Never put out salted or roasted nuts, or any food that shows signs of mould.
• Whole peanuts belong in a rigid mesh feeder, never loose in a bottle, and are best avoided entirely during the breeding season.
• Bread fills birds up without nourishing them. Leave it out.
• Add a shallow dish of clean water nearby for drinking and bathing, and refresh it daily in warm weather.

Positioning: Cats, Windows and Squirrels

Hang your feeder at least two metres above the ground, on a branch, a bracket or a metal crook, and at least two metres from the nearest shrub or fence. Birds need cover to retreat to, but a launch pad that close gives cats exactly the ambush they want.

Think about your windows. Feeders placed within about a metre of glass, or more than three metres away, cause the fewest collisions. The dangerous zone is the middle distance, where a bird gathering speed cannot pull up in time. A feeder just outside the glass is surprisingly safe, because birds never build up enough momentum to hurt themselves.

Squirrels will find a bottle feeder eventually. A baffle above the feeder, or hanging it from a thin wire stretched between two points, will slow them down. Expect to lose a bottle or two; it is part of the bargain.

Cleaning and Looking After It

This is the part most people skip, and it matters more than anything else in this article. Dirty feeders spread disease, and finch trichomonosis has hit Oxfordshire's greenfinches and chaffinches hard over the past two decades. A clean feeder is a genuine act of conservation.

• Clean every two weeks as a minimum, and weekly in warm or wet weather.
• Take the feeder apart, scrub it with hot soapy water and a bottle brush, then rinse thoroughly.
• Follow with a mild disinfectant solution made for bird feeders, or a dilute bleach solution, and rinse again until no smell remains.
• Allow it to dry fully before refilling. Damp seed is the enemy.
• Discard any seed that looks clumped, dark or smells sour, and clear spilled seed from the ground below.
• Wear gloves, and wash your hands afterwards.

If you notice a bird looking fluffed-up, lethargic or unwilling to fly from the feeder, take everything down for a fortnight, clean it thoroughly and let the site rest. Report unusual deaths to your county bird recorder, who will want to know.

Finally, do not stop in spring. Birds need reliable food through the breeding season as much as in a hard January, and a bottle feeder quietly working away outside the kitchen window is one of the simplest pleasures an Oxfordshire garden can offer.