Home School - Pine Cone Bird Feeders

Every year the RSPB do a Big Garden Bird watch. A lot of schools participate in this; this is actually how I knew of it.

If you want to join in then it is aimed to start at the end of the month between the 28th and 30th. 

With the cold weather hitting us this is the perfect time to be feeding the birds and enticing them into the garden. 

We were lucky that we had some pine cones left over in our crafts from before Christmas so we decided that we would make them, as well as a few different types which you will see on here soon.

 Before we started we discussed and considered a few things:

1: We wanted to see if we could entice as many birds on the websites list; big and small. We subsequently chose food that suited all types of birds.

2: When choosing our food we decided that we would be kind and cautious to our neighbours and our local area;  we didn't choose any product that contained nuts. (Birds can carry their food over a fair distance, cross contamination could put others at risk!)

Now to the making!

Materials

Pine Cones

String

Selection of bird food

Cooking Fat/Lard

We used:

Wild bird seed

Sunflower seed

Mealworm

We started off by cutting 50cm length of string and wrapping it around the bottom of the pine cone and then tying a knot to create a loop. (As seen above)

Then using your fingers take the fat and push it in between the scales of the pine cone. We tried to fill in the spaces where the string was so it wouldn't come undone.

We found that taking a handful of the different types of seed and then rolling the pine cone into the mix really helped.

But, using our fingers, we filled in all of the gaps that we could see.

With all of the spaces filled we had our pine cone feeders ready.

The selection of different seeds will hopefully entice some birds into our garden. With the weather being cold and the burst and flurries of snow I think now is the perfect time to be making these.

If it works then you will feed the birds in the colder days and they will feel that your garden is perfect to keep visiting!

I will say though that you do need to be prepared for mess! Every year I moan about how messy it is and this year was the first that I fully covered the table with a sheet. As you can see from below it is easy to end up with bird food everywhere.

I scooped up the sheet and put the excess feed out in the garden but I did still find loads on the floor so be warned!

Easy and recyclable homemade feeders and at the perfect time. If you have some left over from crafts before Christmas then give this a go!