I showed you the bird feeder I made out of a baked orange, so I thought I’d tell you how it’s going with the birds.

They ignored it hanging up. I think that’s because there’s no perch for them. When I removed the strings and sat the feeder on a patio table, the birds devoured the seeds right away.

It may be possible to make holes in the feeder to insert a small dowel rod for a perch, but for now I like the feeding cup. There’s something oddly soothing about seeing a bird eat out of an orange. Not sure why.

Image via Peggy Rowland.

So, this is the project I set out to conquer before getting distracted by my Sixteen Uses for Baked Orange Cup. I had to come up with something for that smaller half I accidentally created. It was too cute to waste. Had I cut the orange evenly, I could have had two bird feeders.

I was inspired to make the orange bird feeder from a recipe in Home Made by Alexa Lett. I had to make a few substitutions. She recommended setting grapefruits or oranges outside after cutting so that they could dry. That’s great if you have sunny, hot weather and low humidity, but I went with baked oranges because I’m impatient and bad (for using electricity). See my Very Versatile Baked Orange Cup for a recipe on baking orange cups.

What else — I used a lacing needle to make the orange holes instead of the ice pick, and I used kitchen string instead of the jute she recommended, but that was only because I didn’t have any jute. Also, I decided to spice up my bird feeder with a charm from a Burt’s Bees gift package I received at Christmas. The other decoration in the photo is a lapel pin I had. If you decide to decorate with a pin like that, remove the needle and use glue, or make extra sure you’ve fastened the back very well. You don’t want to traumatize any birdies!

What you need:
Orange or grapefruit
Sunny day with low humidity or oven with baked orange recipe
Jute or kitchen string
Lacing needle or something else to puncture the orange for tying Read more