Winter Is For The Birds

While busy with all things winter and jury duty this week, I dusted off this post from years ago.

No matter what yesterday was like, birds always start the day with a song.

Enjoy & have a blessed weekend!

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It’s winter and that means it is time to feed the birds.

There are a lot of recipes for homemade suet.  I found the following recipe to be the quickest and easiest to make:

Ingredients:

• One part lard at room temperature to two parts bird seed
• Add raisins, peanuts, sunflower seeds, flax seeds

Method:

Combine lard and bird seed in a large bowl with a spoon or “squish it all together with your hands”.  Pack the seed mixture into a container.  We used one of several: the plastic cups and square shallow plastic container lined with wax paper as pictured above.  The square shape suet cake simply slips into our square cage suet feeder.  The plastic cup design was found at The Nurture Store: Creative Kids Learning.

Place the suet cakes in the freezer for several hours.  Our’s took about 24 hours to freeze solid.  Once frozen solid, the suet cakes are ready to hang.

I was not expecting Starlings to invade; unfortunately, they have invaded. They are very aggressive so much so the squirrels and blue jays now keep their distance from our feeders.

Feeding birds through the winter has been a family activity for over eighteen years. It started as a homeschool project where we could observe wildlife first-hand: bird identification, social behavior (pecking order),  physical characteristics of of each bird and their food choices and so much more. Not to mention, a great opportunity to photograph wildlife in our back yard! 

Pick up a bird feeder or two, bird seed and, of course, your camera and enjoy! Below are a few resources to get you started:

• The Nurture Store: Creative Kids Learning “How To Make A Bird Feeder”
• The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• The Bird Book by Neil and Karen Dawe (published in 1998 and assume it is out of print; not endorsing Amazon)