Homemade Bird Trap - Making the Carrying Handle and Restraints

The Carrying Handle of the homemade bird trap allows you to conveniently carry and move the cage with just one hand. Even though lightweight, the bird trap housing is a bit bulky to hold with both hands without the carrying handle.

As the homemade bird trap weighs only about 1/4 of a kilo, the carrying handle too is light and thin. It can hold up the cage even with five trapped sparrows inside.

The carrying handle easily swings to either side. Because it is thin, you can lay it flat on the top panel and stack another homemade bird trap on top of it. This feature comes in handy when you have several traps and need to store them.

Homemade Bird Trap - Making the Door and Lock

Although there are several designs for a bird trap access door, the swing-out and sliding type of doors are perhaps the most common.

A swing-out type (or sometimes called a "flip" type) of an access door is much easier to build than a sliding type. It has a simple design and is reliable. There are no precision parts to fabricate that may jam and render the access door inoperable. This DIY (Do-It-Yourself) project is for a simple yet effective bird trap, not a fancy bird cage to keep and feed pet birds.

Homemade Bird Trap - Making the Access Hole

Primarily, the bird trap access hole allows you to retrieve the trapped birds safely and effectively. Although other trappers simply sprinkle bait food inside the cage (like I do), it could also be your access to put in water or bait food in containers.

The access hole also allows you to clean the inside of the bird trap as necessary. Debris, such as dried leaves or grass that may have entered the cage may be removed through the access hole. When the bird trap housing is completed and closed, the access hole is your only means for doing repairs or maintenance on the inside of the bird trap cage.

Homemade Bird Trap - Making the Guard Rails

Many Funnel Repeating Bird Trap designs I've seen just have two or more funnels in the trap. Many of them have the funnels placed opposite each other. There is one design that I've seen so far which incorporates a guard rail in addition to the funnel. A guard rail is positioned close to the end of the funnel or the funnel exit. This DIY project will use a guard rail to make the trap more effective.

Homemade Bird Trap - Making the Funnels

The secret for trapping small birds in this kind of a bird trap is the funnel. Hence, it's called a Repeating Funnel Trap. It is "repeating" because the trap doesn't need to be reset after trapping a bird. It is a passive trap that can catch multiple birds.

The funnel must allow the bird to pass through easily without much restriction coming in from the outside. As a funnel, the entrance outside is taller and wider. It gradually narrows toward the exit inside the bird trap cage.

Homemade Bird Trap - Building the Housing

The first step for making the bird trap is to build the housing. For simplicity, stick to a rectangular box design. A rectangular box design is easy to build and has minimum corners. Minimum corners give trapped birds more space inside. This design is easy to clean. If you have several of these rectangular bird traps, then they're also easy to stack and store.

Homemade Bird Trap - Materials and Tools

The Homemade Bird Trap project is mostly do-it-yourself or DIY. Some of the materials may be sourced from scrap items while most of them may be bought from a hardware store.

Since the end product will be used for trapping small birds, I had assumed that there really wouldn't be any 'heavy duty' materials needed for the trap. And for this, I bought the cheapest wire screen I could find. I mean how strong can a sparrow or some other small birds be, to destroy the trap? Of course, I have planned on setting the above ground, overhead actually, far from the ground and away from my dog.

My dog gets all curious and fired up when seeing flapping birds, especially those in distress. So who knows what she'll do to the trap in order to get to the birds. I'm guessing rolling and gouging on it, and deforming the trap as a result.

Garden and Yard Trash Bag Holder - DIY - Part 2

In part 1 of this article, I discussed the procedures to make a sturdy and functional yet inexpensive garden and yard trash bag holder. This homemade project makes use of a few simple items like an old plastic stool, four adhesive hooks and the disposable garbage bag.

There are two types of disposable garbage bags discussed for this garden and yard trash bag holder: those that have flaps or cross-ties that allow you to close and tie the opening, and those bags that don't have flaps. These will be discussed briefly.

This post continues the steps enumerated in part 1.

Garden and Yard Trash Bag Holder - DIY

It seems that there will be too much garden and yard waste or trash. No matter how we practice composting or burning using my homemade garden trash incinerator, there will always be extra yard trash to handle. This is especially during the rainy season when the incinerator gets out of commission since everything is wet and won't burn.

In this situation, we have no choice but to bag leaves, flowers and twigs for the garbage haulers to pick up. That is why disposable garbage bags are a huge convenience for gardening also. Unlike indoors, we don't use a trash bin for the garden and the yard. Instead, we use a trash bag holder to hold the disposable trash bag.

Air Layering or Marcotting (Rangoon Creeper)

The Rangoon Creeper (Quisqualis indica or Combretum indicum) is also known by the common names: Chinese honeysuckle, Burma Creeper, Scarlet Rangoon and Drunken Sailor. Other names for the plant include Quiscual (in Spanish), Niyog-niyogan (in Filipino), Madhu Malti or Madhumalti (in Hindi), Malati (in Assamese), Akar Dani (in Malay) and Radha Manoharam (in Telugu).

The kind that we have is the double-petaled variety. Compared to the single petal variety, the double has smaller petals on the flower. But the cluster of flowers look so much thicker. It is one of the most beautiful and fragrant vines we had. Naturally, almost immediately, we wanted to propagate or make clones out of it.