Upcycled Glass Bottle Bird Feeder

I have a lot of problems with squirrels tearing apart my plastic bird feeders. It's not that costly to replace them as I use a lot of plastic bottles as bird feeders. It's just that it's a pain to make a new feeder. A thought came to me the other day when I was bringing glass bottles to the recycling center. Maybe I should just make a feeder out of a glass bottle. So I grabbed an Avocado oil bottle out and set it aside. Next I searched online on how to drill holes in glass bottles. It's actually very simple. First I ordered a set of some cheap diamond tipped hole saw bits. You can only use them three or four times each before they wear out. Next I grabbed my battery powered portable drill. Don't use a corded drill unless you want to get electrocuted and die. Following that I put some duct tape over the three places I wanted to drill some holes. Two small ones in the bottles neck and one larger one down at the bottom of the bottle for the feeder spout.The duct tape helps to keep the bit from sliding all over when you start to drill. I say helps because getting the hole started was the hardest step. I filled a pan of water with just enough water to immerse the bottle laying flat on its side in the water. This provided a layer of water to cool and lubricate the hole saw bit when I drilled the holes. It only took a couple of minutes to drill each hole. After drilling I cut up a wire clothes hanger up to hang the bird feeder from.The final step to building the feeder was to take some medium sand paper and smooth out the sharp edges of the holes. That afternoon I filled the new feeder up with black sunflower seed and hung it up where my old plastic feeder used to be. Within a few minutes the birds were already using it. I was very pleased with how it came out. This morning I set up a perch next to the feeder and got a really nice image of a Chestnut-backed Chickadee waiting to come to the feeder. I photographed it from my photoblind with a Canon EOS 7D MKII camera with a Tamron 150-600mm lens at 300mm. The camera settings used were AV mode, ISO 800, F 8.0 at 1/40th of a sec. fill flash was provided by a Canon 550EX Speedlight set to -1 1/3stops. These little guys are a lot of fun to photograph. Mendocino County, Northern California.#teamcanonusa, #withmytamron God's blessings upon your weekend, chris

Digital Return to Florida

My time of late has been taken up with other endeavors. It's been raining for the past couple of days so I've been going through my images from Florida in November. Here are a few highlights.God's love and blessings upon your day, chris All images were created with a Canon EOS camera. #teamcanonusa

From the Shadows

While helping my Mom clean up her art room I came upon her cups, cans and containers of art brushes. It's interesting to think of all the canvases that these brushes helped create beautiful paintings on.She has been painting now for seventy -five years. I set up a black backdrop and photographed one of them in natural window light. God's love and blessings upon your day, chris This image was created with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i and a Canon EF 28-200mm lens.#teamcanonusa,

Battered, Broken and Still Standing

Today's photoblog is a follow up to my last one regarding my Mom working in the Lego Model Shop during the 1960s and 70s in Loveland, Colorado. While helping her to clean out a closet this morning I discovered four Lego car models that she had kept. Even though they are dusty, broken and missing a few parts it's evident to see the amazing artistic skill she possesses. How can you create a model car with such detail using little plastic bricks? These cars still look pretty cool after 50 years of being played with by kids and grandkids. I'm hoping to donate them to Lego though I seem to be having trouble speaking or contacting a real person and not a BOT. God's love and blessings to all, chris All images were created with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i and a Tamron 28-200mm lens.