Why Build Rather Than Buy

There is nothing wrong with a shop-bought bird table, but there is something deeply satisfying about one you have knocked together yourself from the pile of offcuts behind the shed. For a start, it costs you almost nothing but an afternoon. More importantly, you get to size it properly for the space you have, and you can build it heavy and solid so it does not end up in the hedge after the first gale. A well-made timber table, given a coat of oil each autumn, will outlast most of the flimsy pine versions sold in garden centres, and it will weather into a lovely silver-grey that sits far more comfortably in a country garden than anything painted or plastic.

The other advantage is that you can build it to suit your birds. A smallholding with a mixed hedgerow and a few mature trees will pull in a different crowd to a suburban patio, and you can tailor the design accordingly: a wider roof for wet western counties, a longer perch rail for a busy flock, a plate at the base of the post to keep the rats off.

Sorting Through Your Timber

Start by raiding the offcut pile. What you want is timber that is naturally durable or has been properly pressure-treated, because a bird table gets wet on a weekly basis and never really dries out.

• Good choices: oak, sweet chestnut, larch, douglas fir, or tanalised (pressure-treated) softwood left over from a fence or shed job.
• Acceptable: untreated pine or spruce for the roof and tabletop, provided you oil it well and accept that it will need replacing in a few years.
• Avoid entirely: MDF, chipboard, plywood and anything that has been treated with creosote, old engine oil or a preservative that smells strongly of solvent. These are genuinely harmful to birds.

Aim for a tabletop around 600mm square, built from boards roughly 20–25mm thick. The post wants to be at least 75 x 75mm, and ideally 100 x 100mm if you have a decent length of it. A sturdy post is the difference between a table that lasts ten years and one that wobbles every time a wood pigeon lands.

Tools and Fixings

You do not need a workshop full of machinery. A hand saw or a small circular saw, a cordless drill, a tape measure, a square, a pencil, a hammer and a rasp will see you through. A combination square helps enormously when you are marking out the roof, and a couple of clamps make screwing the frame together far less frustrating.

For fixings, use galvanised or stainless steel screws throughout. Plain steel will rust and stain the timber within a season, and the heads will eventually snap off. Sizes of around 4 x 40mm for the tabletop battens and 5 x 70mm or 6 x 100mm for the structural joints will cover most of the build. If you use nails at all, use galvanised clout nails and only for the roof covering.

Building the Top and Roof

Cut four boards to length and screw them to two cross-battens underneath, leaving a small gap of about 3mm between each board. Those gaps let rainwater drain away instead of pooling, which is the single biggest cause of mouldy, sour-smelling bird tables. Run a thin strip of timber around the edge of the top to form a lip roughly 25mm high, with a couple of gaps left in it for drainage.

The roof is what makes a table really work in a British climate. Cut two boards slightly wider than the tabletop, join them at a shallow ridge of about 90 to 110 degrees, and fix them to a pair of triangular gable ends. Keep the roof about 300–350mm above the tabletop — high enough to stop the rain driving in, low enough that the birds still feel safe and you can see them from the kitchen window. Finish the ridge with a strip of timber, or a length of lead flashing if you have some. Give the whole thing two coats of raw linseed oil, Danish oil or a clear wood preserver that is safe for wildlife, and let it dry properly before it goes outside.

Siting It Well

Position matters more than most people realise. Set the table so it stands about 1.3 to 1.5 metres to the tabletop — high enough to be out of reach of ground predators and rats, low enough that you can refill it comfortably.

• Place it two to three metres from a hedge, shrub or tree, so birds have somewhere to retreat to but cats cannot creep up unseen.
• Keep it well away from windows to reduce collisions, or fit a couple of decals if the glass is a problem.
• Choose a spot you can see from a favourite chair — you will watch it far more than you think.
• If squirrels are a menace, hang a baffle on the post below the table, and fix a wide metal collar to stop rats and mice climbing.

Feeding, Cleaning and Long Life

Once it is up, resist the temptation to put out everything at once. A simple mix of sunflower hearts, good-quality seed and a few fat balls will bring in tits, finches, robins, dunnocks and the occasional nuthatch. If you offer peanuts, use a proper mesh feeder rather than loose nuts, and never put out fat balls still in their plastic nets.

Cleanliness is the part most of us let slide. Scrub the tabletop weekly with a stiff brush and hot water, and use a bird-safe disinfectant once a month. Move feeders around the garden periodically to stop droppings and discarded seed building up in one spot under the table. Scrape off old food, let the wood dry, and top up little and often rather than heaping it high. Do all of that, and a table built from scrap on a Saturday morning will serve your garden birds for a decade or more — and look entirely at home doing it.