Super quick DIY Bird House Made of Zip Cable Ties, Licsense Plates and Wood, with a Stove Pipe Squirrel Buster

I knew I was saving those six old license plates for something, a bird house! I happened to be in my basement looking at the license plates when I also saw some zip ties...humm. 10 plastic quick ties later and I had a stable platform feeder. Screwed it to a piece of wood, a pole, and a stove pipe.

At first, total fail. No birds, local squirrel very happy! But Shaw loved to watch the squirrel up close eating. Actually, I did too.

 Then I moved the bird feeder out in the yard. And today, two weeks later, the first bird arrived!

"Plastic branches!? Is Achy Dad mad!?"

"Who cares about the ambiance, the food is good."

Now, to the high-tech anti squirrel shield - a cheap stove pipe! Squirrels can go inside, but are blocked at the top, and they can't get purchase on the outside. < $10.00 too. Much less if all the stuff is used. 

It's made of 4 screws, two right angle brackets and one 24" stove pipe. One of the excellent folks at the local Ace Hardware store saw me shopping for some squirrel busting technology and whispered, "you an also save some money and use stove pipe and a couple of angle brackets," so I did.

Here's some photos of making the bird house part in about 5 minutes with 19 ties. 

Zip tie together so they plates overlap like shingles on a house. This is good for rain and snow

The bottom two, put the paint side down, so the birds have stainless steel to eat off. Sheet rock screw into the two center plate holes.

Wire cut the sides, bend up.

Get a 8-foot 2" x 1", screw on a roughly 6" x 6" piece of scrap wood to the top, and then screw to the wood under the license plates.

Screw in two small right angle brackets to the wood, 6" apart, and then to the stove pipe.

Dig at roughly 2 ft deep hole.

Get some helpers to make sure it's level and square.

Fill it in with dirt, and some rocks. As Shaw says often "We are workers!"

In place with old feeder as a new squirrel feeder close to window.

Now, we wait to see if any birds other than Chickadees use the damn thing!

Now, it remains to be seen if the ends of the zip ties will be a place small birds like to land, or if that is a total fail! For now, I'm sort of charmed by them in a Frankentree kind of way. And I'm lazy and didn't want to cut them if I didn't have to.