Easy bird feeders

Every monsoon, that birds were falling off trees and injuring themselves.

He would pick them up and bring them home but, in time, he’d find that his mother would leave the birds back outside. Wanting to do something to lend a helping hand to his feathered friends, who could not speak for themselves, without having to bring them home, he gathered his friends and set about designing birdhouses to offer them shelter, and bird-feeders to give them food.students collected waste materials. Anando organises regular activity clubs during weekends, where children from slum areas in and around Jadavpur are encouraged to explore their creative side and work independently. The framework of Design for Change – a not-for-profit organisation that challenges children to solve problems in their community – forms a crucial part of what Anando does.\The framework encourages children to first ‘feel’ for an issue, then ‘imagine’ a way out of it, then ‘do’ something about it, and go on to ‘share’ their idea with more people.set about designing a simple bird-feeder from waste plastic bottles. This is a typical design, where two sticks are inserted into the bottle. One acts as a perch for the bird to sit on, and the other as a dispenser for seeds. A small hole allows the birds to feed on the grass seeds inside. The second stick was abandoned in later models as it did not work.After a trial, the students also realised that the feeder had to be made waterproof, otherwise all the seeds would be reduced to a lump in the rain. The students used dry leaves to create a ‘cap’ around the bottle top, and varnished the leaves to make them waterproof, so that rainwater would flow off. While this worked, the feeders – painted in bright colours – turned out to be so attractive that passers-by started stealing them to take home!