ACTIVITY 4 - Make your own Bird Cake

During the winter months many of our wintering birds find it hard to find food, therefore, many people put kitchen scraps in their gardens to help the birds out. A lot of what birds like include seeds such as sunflower and millet seeds, barley, wheat grain, rolled oats etc. Our garden birds also like nuts such as hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds and peanuts as well as dried fruits such as raisins, currents and sultanas. You can also feed your birds kitchen scraps such as breadcrumbs and crusts, stale cake and broken biscuits, as well as cooked rice and pasta, although they like it best without tomato sauces. Most leftovers will give a bird a meal including stale cheese, bacon rinds, meat bone, even tinned catfood, also old rotting fruit, so before you throw any left overs in the bin, think if your local birds would find it a good meal.

Making bird food is easy, but you should ask for a little help from an adult before starting to make this recipe.

Recipe

• Fill half a tit-bell, coconut shell or yoghurt pot with a mixture of seeds, nuts, currants, stale cheese or any other left overs
• Stir in almost the same amount of melted suet or fat
• Give it all a quick stir
• Allow the mixture to set before putting it out onto your bird table.

Before you start try placing a piece of string through the middle of your pot which will be useful to attach your finished bird cake to a tree branch etc.

Once you start feeding your birds why not start your own 'Bird Spotter Chart' use the example sheet below to help you record the bird visitors to your garden.

Bird Spotter Chart

Print out this page and complete it at home...