DIY Oriole Feeders

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DIY Oriole Feeders — Repurpose your old candle lids to make feeders for your feathered friends!

DIY Oriole Feeders

We are huge lovers of wild birds at my house and have several types of feeders in our backyard to attract different birds. Some attract shyer birds like blue jays and downy woodpeckers, while others attract more social birds like hummingbirds, goldfinches, chickadees, cardinals, mourning doves, sparrows, wrens … well, you get the idea. 😉

But we have never put a feeder out there to attract orioles and I’m not sure why, as I regularly saw Baltimore Orioles in my grandmother’s yard when I was a kid — they were just as common as the other songbirds. Orioles quite often “eat” from nectar feeders similar to what hummingbirds use — oriole feeders are a bit bigger and colored with orange to attract them, just as red attracts hummers — but they also LOVE grape jelly and orange halves.

A few weeks back I remembered a DIY Oriole Feeder project from many moons ago that turned old jar candle lids into oriole feeders. I have plenty of lids on hand so all I had to do was find a way to make them hang. Floral wire to the rescue! And Orioles are attracted to orange and presumably purple (the grape jelly thing), so out came the ribbon spools to dress up their feeders.

 

Attaching the wire was the hardest part but it wasn’t difficult. I used pre-cut pieces of wire instead of on a spool so the hangers weren’t as long as I would have initially liked. Still, there was enough excess wire for me to make a half-circle to connect it to the opposite side of the lid. This is where the sparkly black ribbon came in handy, so the feeders could hang a little lower from the hooks. The ribbon also helped to hide where I twisted off the ends of the wire, as well as wave the colorful food flag to the Orioles.

I had mandarin oranges on hand instead of full-sized ones, and they ended up being perfectly sized to fit in the lids. And I ~always~ have grape jelly on hand for those impromptu PB&J sandwiches, so this project cost me nothing. A few spoonfuls of jelly and an orange half later, and the new feeders were loaded and ready to go.