Making Homemade Bird Food & A Feeder

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It’s easy to keep birds coming into your yard year after year by making your own homemade bird food to leave around. We have a few recipes for you below to try but don’t forget that different species of birds have different feeding habits and preferences.

If you cater your bird food to these preferences, you’ll be able to attract all the species that you want to your bird feeders.

making homemade bird food

Homemade Suet Cakes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cup Bread Crumbs
  • 1/2 cup Sunflower Seeds
  • 1/2 cup Chopped nuts
  • 1 cup raisins
  • 1 pound suet

Method

  1. In a small saucepan, cover the oats with water and cook until the oats soften.
  2. Crumble up some pieces of stale bread and add oatmeal, raisins seeds and nuts. Then mix these ingredients together.
  3. In a saucepan, melt the suet so it’s soft enough to work with. Then pour the suet into the dry mixture and blend together well.
  4. Leave the mixture to cool for a while until the suet is cool enough to handle.
  5. Then form the bird food into balls.
  6. Tie string around each ball and hang them from trees or place in bird feeders to attract the birds.
homemade bird food

When making this homemade bird food, it’s fine to change or amend the types of fruit and berries you add to the mixture.

The best way to attract birds into your yard is to use fruits and berries and see what different species are attracted to the various fruits you leave out for them.

Many smaller birds, such as wrens, sparrows, cardinals, chickadees, bluebirds and thrushes love stale bread or stale cake crumbled up and mixed with peanut butter.

Homemade Bird Food Blocks

Ingredients

  • Bread crumbs
  • Apple
  • Raisins
  • Peanut butter
  • Lard

Method

homemade bird food blocks
  1. When making bird food blocks, the quantities of ingredients you use aren’t important. Just be sure you use enough lard to bind the ingredients together so they’ll form a block.
  2. Chop up the apple into small pieces and crumble some stale bread or stale cake.
  3. Place the ingredients into a mixing bowl and add raisins.
  4. Melt the lard so it’s soft enough to pour into the mixture.
  5. Scoop around 1 tablespoon of peanut butter into the mixture and stir well to mix the ingredients thoroughly. They should form a dough that can be molded.
  6. Line a small plastic container with grease-proof paper and press the bird food mixture into the base.
  7. Leave in the fridge overnight to set.
  8. When the bird food has set so it’s hardened, remove it from the container and poke a hole through the center.
  9. Tie some string through the hole and leave enough at one end to hang your bird food mold to a tree outside.

Birds will love this!

Homemade Hummingbird Nectar

There’s nothing nicer than watching the hummingbirds hover around your flowers and shrubs.

Here’s a recipe sure to attract them into your garden. You don’t need to add coloring or honey to the mixture, as honey will end up attracting more ants than hummingbirds.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 cups water

Method

  1. Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan.
  2. When it’s boiling rapidly, add the sugar and stir well until the sugar dissolves.
  3. Remove from the heat and leave aside to cool completely.
  4. Then add the mixture to your hummingbird feeders.
  5. Store any unused portions in a sealed container in the fridge.

Now you understand how to make bird food, try your hand a making a simple bird feeder

A Quick Simple Homemade Bird Feeder

We always see birds outside the window on the tree in the garden and I wanted to feed them. The only bit that concerned us was spending a fortune on a store-bought bird feeder.

So we had the idea to make our own. Our son Christopher had great fun making this neat little homemade bird feeder. It can be made from an empty juice or milk carton so it’s a good way to recycle them!

homemade bird feeder

This really is an interesting project! and the feeder has started to attract a few wild birds into our yard. Chris is so proud of his creation and it’s lovely to see.

What You Need

  • A milk or juice carton
  • Paint and a paint brush
  • String or garden wire

Method

  1. Cut out most of the sides of the carton remembering to leave plenty of space at the bottom for the bird food.Making a homemade bird feeder
  2. Paint your feeder, I would advise that the feeder is painted in a more natural color than the one Chris made, I explained to him that it should blend in easily with its surroundings so it won’t frighten off the birds, but apparently, the blue is the sky and the green are leaves ?
  3. Once the paint has dried, use a pen to poke a hole through the fold at the top of the carton and then thread a piece of string or garden wire through it.
  4. Fill the bottom of the homemade bird feeder with seed or some of the homemade bird food, then let your child hang it outside and wait for the birds to come and feed.
homemade bird feeder

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