It’s become somewhat of a yearly tradition for Miss G and I to make fun homemade bird feeders for our feathered friends each winter. As much as I’m {admittedly} not a huge bird lover, I certainly don’t want them to go hungry while their usual food sources are scarce or unavailable. Plus, our little lady adores them and that’s enough for me.
When I spotted fresh cranberries at our local grocery store here in Kuwait, I grabbed a bag immediately, knowing just how we’d put them to good use. Cranberry popcorn garlands are just one of those things – a craft so classic that it’s a shame to not try at least once.
I swear, I’m not a hoarder. In fact, with something like 49 moves under my belt in my 31 years, it’s quite the opposite. I’d much rather toss/recycle/give something away than have to lug it to a new location. Buuuuuuut, the other day after juicing a bunch of citrus fruit, I couldn’t help but think that there might be something we could do will all of the empty rinds (please tell me some of you do this too). Not knowing what it was at the moment, I tossed them all into a container in the fridge and decided I’d figure it out later. Sure enough, a couple of days later as I was grabbing something from the fridge, I remembered the very unique bird feeders I’d seen on Happy Hooligans a few months back. Gracen loves birds and we love to keep our backyard feather friends well fed, so I decided we’d make our own version of the project.
First, we gathered a few things from around the house… The rinds, some baker’s twine (Greenmunch is a great place to buy it, plus everything party, mason jar, and crafting related!), an large embroidery needle, and a pushpin.
After threading our needle and tying a knot at the end, we pushed our embroidery needle through one side of our citrus cup, straight through the other side. I thought we may need the tack to start our holes, but we totally didn’t (though you might if you had a particularly tough rind). I did the poking, and Miss G did the pulling through part.
With the twine pulled all the way through, we pulled up the centre to create a long loop for hanging.
Next, we did a quarter turn and fed the needle straight through the rind again, this time perpendicular to the first set of holes.
Then we pulled the second centre string up to meet the first and tied a knot on the outside of the citrus cup in order to secure everything.
While she helped me ‘sew’ the first couple of rinds, Gracen discovered that she could make some pretty interesting creations with the extra citrus cups and pushpins, so that’s what she did.
This little lemon went from having ‘pokey hair’ to being an octopus, to being a porcupine, and many other things along the way.
When our citrus rind cups were complete, we focused on the food portion of the process.
All we did was take some bird seed (we used a wild bird variety), and mixed in a tablespoon of all-natural peanut butter for every half cup of seed in order to give it some ‘stick’.
Then Grae carefully filled the cups with the sticky seed mixture one scoop at a time.
We used 1 1/2 cups of seed with 3 tablespoons of peanut butter and it filled 2 grapefruit cups and 2 lemon cups until heaping.
With that, it was off to hang the new feeders in the backyard.
Gracen was very specific and knew she wanted one in our apple-pear tree, one in our fig tree, and one in our plum tree… And the other one got hung in our rose bush.
Now let’s bring on the hungry birdies!
See our other bird feeders here and here.
♥
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Despite the incident we had at Granville Island a couple of months back, our little lady remains a dedicated bird lover (unlike her mama). So today we headed out into our sunshiny backyard, supplies in hand, to make a couple of simple, toddler-friendly bird feeders. Here’s what we did…
Seedy Bagel Rings:
For this project, we used wild bird seed mix, some wholewheat bakery bagels, some ‘just peanuts’ peanut butter, some jute (it’s biodegradable and can be repurposed by birds when building their nests), a spatula, and some scissors.
First things first, cover one side of the bagel with peanut butter.
You want it nice and thick so that the seeds really stick.
Then plop it, peanut butter side down, into the seed mixture.
Really push it down into the seeds to collect as many as possible.
It should look something like this.
Next, spread peanut butter on the other side.
And cover it completely with seeds.
Almost done! While you tie a loop of jute through the middle of the bagel, have your little one wash the gobs of peanut butter off of her hands.
Tada! Here’s the finished product.
Now tie them up in a tree and wait for hungry birds to flock your way.
Toasted O Loops:
For this feeder, we used jute, scotch tape, low-sugar toasted O cereal, and some scissors.
First thing, cut a piece of jute, tie a triple knot at one end, and wrap a small bit of tape around the other end so that it doesn’t fray.
Next, string the o’s onto the jute, one by one.
It’s a slow process… Especially if your munchkin eats five o’s for every one she strings!
When you’ve got a nice long string, make a loop and tie it at the top.
Then knot it onto a tree branch. It doesn’t get any easier than that!
I’m sure we’re inviting all kinds of scary crows and seagulls into our yard with these tempting treats swinging from our trees, but if it provides some entertainment for our little bird watcher, it’ll be worth it.