Celebrate Spring By Making Bird Feeds At-Home: Ages 3+
Watch all the local birds enjoy a snack out of your DIY bird feeder! How many different birds can you spot? Remember to remove the feeder once wet or soiled from the weather.
Why?
Food, especially high-calorie food, is sometimes hard to find for our local birds. Let’s make a bird feeder so our feathery friends can have the sustenance they need!
Vocabulary:
- Bird
- Spring
- Decorate
- Mix
- Observe
- Identify
Materials:
- Yogurt cup/cleaned can/plastic cup
- Crisco*
- Birdseed
- Sticks (craft or collect them from outside)
- Yarn/twine to hang the feeder
- Markers or acrylic to decorate the outside
- Bowl for mixing
- Hot Glue Gun and glue sticks
*The greasy Crisco is actually important. Besides holding the birdseed in the container, it also provides
our friends the fat and energy that is hard to come by in the winter months, and they need that energy
to survive.
Directions:
- Decorate the cup/can
- Hang a string from the top (the side of the yogurt cup opposite the stick)
- Mix the birdseed and Crisco together (enough Crisco to stick the birdseed together, not enough
to be solid Crisco with dots of birdseed.) - Fill up the yogurt cup with the birdseed/Crisco mix
- Hold the yogurt cup sideways (so the birdseed is to the left/right (not up or down)
- Stick a stick into the “bottom” of the yogurt cup (for the bird to sit on and eat). You might need a
drop of hot glue to make it secure
Fun Activities You Can Do With DIY Birdfeeders at Home
- See which birds might be in our garden at the moment. Can you identify them?
- Explore the internet for local bird species in your area.
- Purchase a field guide to keep on hand like this pocket guide of birds of Northern and Central California.
- Talk a walk around your neighborhood to see what other birds live there. What observations can you make? What are they doing? Are they on the ground? In the trees? What are they eating?