Keep your birds coming around all year round with this simple easy bird feeder made up in just a few steps. You'll love watching the birds for hours and they'll love you for filling them up and keeping them warm through the cold days of winter.
Approximate Time: 10 minutes each
By Gem from VA
This page contains the following solutions.
For a cheap, easy bird feeder, string strands of fruit flavored cereal loops on tree or bush branches. You can also press peanut butter into crevices of pine cones and coat them with birdseed.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
What else can be used besides peanut butter?
By Stephanie from NJ
Bird seed, bits of apple, corn syrup, and any nuts you don't need. In the winter, they need fats to keep their bodies warm, so bits of suit you can get from the butcher or grocer will help. You are thoughtful for keeping them fed. Good job.
A little while back, I saw where someone told how to make large pine cones into bird feeders. It said to roll the pine cones in something?
and then in bird seed. Can you please tell me exactly how to do this?PLEASE DO NOT use peanut butter!! We used to use it for bird feeders when I was a Cub leader and found out that the peanut butter can become stuck on the beaks of birds sometimes plugging up their nostrils and thereby suffocating them.
Thanks
Some use peanut butter and others, which is more popular, use suet.
Thank you for the info........where do I purchase SUET? I have never come across it in the stores.
I have read that you CAN roll the pine cone in peanut butter as long as you mix the peanut butter with lard. The small bird's beaks get stuck together with just plain peanut butter.
I did a search for suet and came up with this:
"Suet is raw beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. It is a solid at room temperature, and melts at about 21°C (70°F). It is a saturated fat.
The primary use of suet is to make tallow in a process called rendering, which involves melting and extended simmering, followed by straining, cooling and usually a repetition of the entire process.
Unlike suet, tallow can be stored for extended periods without refrigeration. It is used to make soap, for cooking, as a bird food, and was once used for making candles.
The type sold in supermarkets is dehydrated suet.
Woodpeckers, goldfinches, juncos, cardinals, thrushes, jays, kinglets, bluebirds, wrens, and starlings are all known to favor suet-based bird feeders"
If you ask the butcher at the grocery store, he/she will either give or charge you a small price for suet. I use the grease left over from cooking hamburger or bacon instead.
ThriftyFun is one of the longest running frugal living communities on the Internet. These are archives of older discussions.
