NCERT Solutions for Class 5th English Chapter 4 Bird feeders

Q1.

A bird feeder is an object used to keep food for birds. You might have seen bird feeders placed outdoors in balconies, gardens, or parks to attract and feed birds. They are filled with seeds, grains, or nuts and placed in safe locations to help birds find food easily. 1. Look at the pictures of bird feeders given below and try to identify the material used to make them.

The nine bird feeders printed on pages 50 and 51 — numbers 1 to 3 are on page 50, numbers 4 to 9 on page 51.

Answer

There are nine bird feeders in the pictures — three on page 50 and six on page 51. Here is each one, and the material it is made of. The book says it clearly at the end: “These materials are easily available in our homes.”

Page	What the picture shows	Material used
50 — left	A tall see-through jar with a blue lid and handle, with small openings and perches down the sides, standing on a round blue tray. Two little birds are feeding at it.	Plastic (a plastic jar and a plastic tray)
50 — middle	A shallow bowl, yellow inside and orange outside, hanging from three strings with pink beads on them. A bird stands on the rim eating grain.	A bowl (plastic or clay) hung with string or wire
50 — right	A used bottle turned upside down and full of grain, strapped with a band to a green stand, with an orange plate underneath to catch the seed.	A plastic bottle, a wooden or plastic stand and a plate
51 — top left	A flat little tray built out of many small flat sticks laid side by side, hung from a branch by four strings.	Ice-cream sticks (wooden sticks) and string
51 — top middle	A hairy brown dome hanging above a matching brown bowl of grain — the two halves of one nut.	A coconut shell, cut in two halves, hung on wires
51 — top right	A thick hollow log, open at the front and filled with seeds, tied to a tree branch with two wires. A red bird perches on it.	Wood — a hollow log or a piece of bamboo
51 — bottom left	A tea cup lying on its side on a saucer, with grain spilling out, hung from a branch along with a spoon.	A china cup, saucer and spoon (old crockery from the kitchen)
51 — bottom middle	A wide red pot of water on the ground, with a crow bending down to drink.	Clay — an earthen bowl or pot
51 — bottom right	A blue juice or milk carton, cut open at the front, filled with grain and hung from a branch, with a stick pushed through as a perch.	A cardboard carton (a tetra pack) and a small stick

What all nine have in common: Every single one is made from something that was already in the house — an empty bottle, a coconut shell, a cracked cup, ice-cream sticks, a milk carton. Nothing new was bought. That is the real lesson of the page: a thing we were going to throw away can become a home for birds.

Three things every good feeder needs:
1. A flat place where the seed can sit without rolling off.
2. A perch — a rim or a stick for the bird to hold on to while it eats.
3. A roof or a deep shape, so that rain does not spoil the grain.

Do not forget water. In an Indian summer, a shallow clay bowl of clean water helps birds even more than grain does. That is exactly what the crow in the picture is doing.

Q2.

2. Make a bird feeder with the material of your choice. Fill it up with water, seeds, and grains like millets. With the help of your parents, place it at an appropriate location outside your house. Happy feeding!

Answer

This is a making task, so do it at home with an elder. Here is one easy way, using an empty plastic bottle — the material most of us have.

What you need: one clean, empty two-litre plastic bottle · two wooden spoons or two straight sticks · a piece of strong string, about one metre · a marker pen · scissors (an elder must use these).

Steps:

Wash the bottle well and let it dry fully. Wet grain goes bad.
With the marker, draw two small round holes on opposite sides of the bottle, about 8 cm above the base.
Ask an elder to cut those two holes. Push a stick right through both, so that it sticks out on either side. That is the perch the birds will sit on.
Just above the stick, on one side, cut a small opening about the size of a two-rupee coin. The grain will come out here.
Make a second perch and a second opening a little higher up, turned to the other side, so two birds can eat at once.
Fill the bottle with millets (bajra, jowar, kangni), broken rice or sunflower seeds. Screw the cap on tightly.
Tie the string tightly round the neck of the bottle and hang it from a branch, a balcony grill or a hook.
Beside it, keep a shallow clay bowl of clean water on a flat surface.

Where to put it — this is the part that matters most:

In shade, not in the hot afternoon sun.
High enough that cats cannot reach it, and away from a wall a cat can jump from.
Near a tree or a bush, so a frightened bird has somewhere to dart to.
Where you can see it from a window — half the fun is watching.
Somewhere quiet. Not above the front door where people come and go all day.

Looking after it: Change the water every single day in summer. Wash the feeder once a week with plain water. Never put in cooked food, salty food, biscuits or bread — these harm birds. Millets, broken rice, sunflower seeds and plain water are best.

Why this is worth doing: Cities are losing their old trees and their open ground, so birds find it harder every year to get food and water. One bowl on one balcony will not save a species. But sparrows come back to a place where there is always water, and once they come back they nest there. Small, steady help is what birds actually need.

Keep a record: Make a page in your notebook. Each day write the date and the birds you saw — sparrow, mynah, bulbul, crow, pigeon, sunbird. After a month you will know exactly which birds live around your house.

NCERT Solutions for Class 5th English Chapter 4 Bird feeders — Let us Do