Upgrade Your Simple Birdhouse With This Clever DIY Project

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Many people try to use decorative birdhouses to bring more songbirds to their yards and gardens. Unfortunately, cuteness-enhancing features such as heart-shaped entrance holes and pint-sized interiors can make these structures unappealing to wild birds. In many cases, these houses are just too small. For example, the Crafter's Square Decorative Wooden DIY Birdhouse that Dollar Tree carries is 2.83 inches by 2.59 inches by 3.85 inches. Even itty bitty hummingbirds need a substantially larger living space: 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches by 8.7 inches. Luckily, there's another way you can use miniature birdhouses to attract feathered friends. Just cover them in peanut butter and birdseed, like you might do with a pine cone to create a bird feeder. Many varieties of birds, including sparrows and woodpeckers, will happily visit these budget-friendly snack stations.

After acquiring a small wooden birdhouse, find a jar of peanut butter and a bag of birdseed. Any kind of low-salt, low-sugar peanut butter will do. Allergic to peanuts? Try a vegetable shortening such as Crisco or a sunflower spread such as Laurel's Nut-Free Sunflower Butter. A wide range of birdseed will work for this project, but you may need to press larger seeds into the peanut butter to make them stay put. Also locate something you can use to hang your house-shaped bird feeder. If the birdhouse doesn't come with a hanger, you could attach a pipe cleaner, a cloth ribbon, or a bit of twine with bird-safe adhesive.

Ready to turn your little house into a feeder? Grab a knife or small spatula and coat the house's exterior in peanut butter. Cover the front, sides, and roof with a thick layer of this "paint." Then sprinkle seeds on top of every surface covered with nut butter. TikTok user @celeste_wright has a nice video showing how to do this. To minimize mess, place the house on a cookie sheet before studding the house with seeds. Or pour the seeds onto a large plate and roll the house in them.

If you don't have access to a small wooden birdhouse, there are lots of other eco-friendly objects you can use to make a peanut butter bird feeder. For instance, peanut butter and birdseed are easy to add to a cardboard toilet paper tube or a piece of driftwood. Don't have any birdseed handy? See if there's any cereal in your cupboard. You're in luck if you find unflavored, unsweetened oatmeal. Birds will flock to feeders stocked with oats. Rolled oats, quick oats, and steel-cut oats are all fine as long as they haven't been cooked. Chickadees, warblers, and woodpeckers especially love this hearty, healthy grain.