For the Birds

My husband, John, and I like to recycle and repurpose neat old stuff. I call him a “scrapper” because he likes going to junk and scrap yards, looking to salvage pieces of metal or wood to make functional furniture or art. The pieces here are a bird bath and companion feeder.

The base of the bird bath is a vintage cast-iron Christmas tree stand. The pedestal, a short section of well casing and the bowl is an old Gravely mower deck turned upside-down.

The feeder base is an old horse-drawn seeder disk plate. The riser is a 1 ½-inch piece of rebar, and the tiered feeder is an inverted garden disk harrow, with a larger disk on top to shed water.

A light coating of axle grease on the rebar deters the squirrels who wait patiently on the ground for hull and seed droppings as the birds eat undisturbed.