Gallows Bird Feeder

Intro: Gallows Bird Feeder

A Hangman Style Bird Feeder and a seedy bread type victim. Made from oddments from around the house.

STEP 1: Getting Started

Finding all the parts was fairly simple. Using a few scrap pieces of wood, some garden twine and basic hand tools.

STEP 2: Gallows Construction

3 pieces of wood are needed for the gallows. We glued the parts and then screwed them together for extra strength. We get some big birds around here! Counter sinking the screws allows us to hide them later using magical wood filler.

STEP 3: Finishing the Frame

We filled the small gaps and screw holes with wood filler and sanded it all down. We also sanded the frame with a sanding drum to give it a worn apperence.

Then the entire frame was stained. Our prefered choice of colour was 'Jacobean Oak'. A small eyelet was then added at the end of the top beam for our noose to attach to.

STEP 4: Noose

The noose was made using brown garden twine. A single strand looked a bit flimsy, so 3 strands were platted together to form a more proportioned rope. There are plenty of guides on the net that describe tying a noose in far more detail than we could present here, so that bit isn't shown.

STEP 5: The Victim

Our sacrificial doughboy was construsted using a simple mix of flour, water and mixed bird seed. We used 200g self-raising flour, 50g bird seed and 175ml of water. The ingredients were mixed into a firm, springy dough and a string 'skeleton' was created to add strength and help bind the various body parts together.

Each part was rolled/shaped by hand and then assembled around the string skeleton on a lightly greased baking tray. The little guys were then baked in a pre-heated oven of around 250C/Gas Mark 9 so that they hardened quickly and kept their shape. They took about 20 minutes to cook evenly.

STEP 6: Putting It All Together ... the Execution

Finally the gallows was screwed onto the shed using the pre-drilled countersunk holes in the vertical piece. The bready dead-boy was then placed into the noose and hung....a moment's silence please...

To support his weak bread-head a small metal hook was made using stiff wire. One end was stuck in his back and the other hooked around the noose to support some of the weight.

Now we can sit back and watch the birds feast on his tiny corpse. Joy!

Comments

[colin]

Totally awesome. I'd love to see a pic of a bird pecking away at it. Another cool project would be to make a similar sculpture but designed for hummingbirds. Create a body out of clear plastic with puncture wounds that the hummingbirds can suck red "blood" out of.

[Matthew Yang]

Good idea, just paint red around the puncture wounds and not the nectar. Red dye is bad for hummingbirds if you put it in the liquid, but if you put red paint around the puncture wounds, then it wouldn't harm the hummingbirds because the red paint would not be in the nectar.

[Scurl!]

i work in a resteraunt, and we toss the butts to our loaves, i think i'm going to save them all and try to make the bodies with those, maybe a little water & flour to stick them together better. then i'll put up a whole bunch of these in our parks....i'm only worried about peoples possible perception that there's a racial element involved.... but i would enjoy watching people walk by a tree with about 50 of these hanging from it....

[Matthew Yang]

I think you could hang them from your restaraunt and in your yard.

[Mario2007]

Wait I think I hear Al sharptons motorcade pulling up .

[roballoba]

I love feeding the birds... this is cool! the seed man is great!

[AZApple]

Gave me a good giggle. Pretty funny and functional, too!

[microbike]

Love it!

i wonder if you could make one with a guy bungee jumping?

[mowie]

my mcaw put its hear thru the hole when i was out

[Valche]

Hahaha, I love it. If anyone gives you grief for it being "non-PC", just tell them it's Guy Fawkes, haha.

[spylock]

You could get hasseled about a noose nowdays,Id be careful,a P.C. neighbor might call the fuzz,it is a good project though and I think Ill make one.

[Kaiven]

lol i might try this...we get birds often by our feeder, so i could build this and hang him by it :P

[--Thatguy--]

Thats pretty cool, im getting birds soon so im looking on here for some cool ideas(like all other things i want good ideas for) maybe you could have a pole going right up to the top of the head just not coming out and bending back a bit so the head can't slip right off and the body falls off with a pole-head. Nice instructable!

[BoTz]

Kinda strange but very cool.

[shady_deluxe]

That's very cool!