Orange Cup Bird Feeders – An Easy Bird Feeder Craft For Kids

Easy Orange Cup Bird Feeders to make with toddlers and preschoolers! Fill empty orange rinds with a few simple ingredients to make bird feeders for your garden.

The hooligans and I love making homemade bird feeders to help our neighbourhood birds and squirrels make it through the long winter season.  To keep things fun and interesting, we never make the same bird feeder twice.  We may use a similar technique or similar ingredients, but the end result is always different, so we’ve made some really unique bird feeders over the years.

Today we’re making orange cup bird feeders using leftover orange halves and simple pantry ingredients.

We’ve been making fresh-squeezed OJ for breakfast this week, so we have an abundance of leftover orange cups at the moment.  They’re too pretty to toss them in the composter, so we upcycle them into bird feeders!  That way, they’ll add a pop of colour to our landscape, while providing a meal for the wildlife in our yard.

Ingredients for Orange Cup Birdfeeders:

Some empty orange cups and a variety of nuts, berries and seeds and grains.

Use whatever you happen to have in your cupboard,  just as long as a bird or a squirrel can make a meal of it.

To make our bird food, we used:

How we made our bird feeders:

My helper poured all of the ingredients into a shallow pan and gave them a good stir.

Doesn’t this look good?  Kinda makes you wish you were a bird, huh?

Mixing the bird food with your bare hands is great fun too!   The sound, the smell and the feel of the mix as you run your fingers through it makes for a wonderful sensory experience.

Then I melted about 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 cup peanut butter together over low heat.

Pour a tablespoon or two of the peanut butter/butter mixture into each cup.

This will firm up as it cools and provide a base for your bird-food to bind to, and keep it from falling out of the cup.

Now sprinkle a handful of your nut and berry mix into the cup and pat it into the base.

Today we headed outside with our bird feeders, and we scattered them throughout the gardens in our backyard.  To keep them in place, and to prevent the high winds from blowing them away, I speared the bottom of each orange with a sturdy twig or branch.  I’m happy to say that after a full day of really high winds, the feeders stayed in place.

Now we’ll just have to watch and see if the birds and squirrels find them!  We’ll keep you posted.

Update: It took a few days for the birds and squirrels to find our feeders, but when they did they picked them clean!

Apparently, if you don’t feed the birds regularly, they won’t know to stop at your place for a munch.  Because these were the first feeders we’d made this season, it did take the birds a while to realize we’d put food out for them.  Next time, they’ll likely notice a little quicker.

If you’re looking for a pretty craft to make with orange slices, check out these dried orange slice ornaments from Red Ted Art!

For more easy bird feeders, check out our:

Cheerio bird feeders

Fruit and Grain Bird Feeders

Cereal and Blueberry Bird Feeders

Milk Jug Bird Feeders

Corn and Chestnut Bird Feeders

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Jackie Currie

Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.