Keep Birds Away From Your Garden With A DIY Wind Spinner

Birds are fascinating animals to watch but become much less so when they eat up your crops and render your hard work useless. How many times have you gotten excited over a ripe tomato, only to find out a large bite was taken out of it? There are many humane ways to keep birds out of your garden, but the netting isn't fun to deal with, fake owls don't always work, and some people find windchimes annoying.

But it's nothing a little creativity and a pair of scissors can't fix! You can create a colorful wind spinner with items you already have in your home to scare birds away. It will spin in the wind, make very little noise, and look pretty cool, too. It's a fun craft that shouldn't take too long, and you can easily adjust the materials used to make it more interesting for older kids and adults or safer for young kids.

This wind spinner will put empty plastic bottles to good use. Cover the bodies of two plastic bottles with colorful tape or reflective material, remove the top, and cut vertical strips. Fold the strips so they fan out and staple the two bottles together, making sure that each strip has a partner. This should create a star shape and be 3D rather than flat. Cut holes in the center of the bottles, run a wire, dowel, or pipe cleaner through the middle, and create a handle with a sturdy straw to anchor it into the ground.

There are so many fun variations you can make with this craft. You can make a more traditional pinwheel style with paper or plastic. The plastic version from Crafting My Home uses cut-outs from binder dividers to create sturdy panes, a wooden dowel, and a nail to hold it all together and hold up to the elements better than a paper version can. If you need a craft for kids, paper pinwheels like the ones from Made Modern only require scissors and pushpins as the "heavy duty" tools that need adult supervision. Though they won't withstand a storm, they'll look great on a sunny day and scare birds away.

Birds have excellent eyesight, so they pick on movement quite well. They're also quite jumpy, so they assume it's a threat when they see something moving and stay away from it. If you see a bird on the ground, it typically flies off once you start walking toward it. It will behave the same way with a wind spinner; it'll stay away from a moving object because it sees it as unsafe.

Move your wind spinner around every couple of days to change it up for the birds. They can become accustomed to movement and eventually realize that it's not a threat anymore. If your wind spinner stays in the same place for too long, the birds might overcome their fears and come to your garden. But, moving it each night or every few days will make the spinning object a threat again since the birds will see it in a new location. Don't move the spinner too far from your garden, though, or it won't be as effective.