By Lucy Corkhill
05th December 2012
The RSPB reckon the most common visitors to your garden will be starlings, house sparrows, blackbirds, blue and great tits, robins, greenfinches and collared doves – check out their interactive bird identifier.
You will need:
A clean yoghurt pot
Some string
2 lollipop sticks or twigs
Lard
Bird seed
Optional: raisins, grated cheese, plain peanuts. Also seeds from the garden, including dock, thistle, stinging nettle, knapweed, teasel or ragwort.
1). Cut a small hole in the base of your yoghurt pot.
2). Thread the string through and tie a knot to secure at the base.
3). Make a cross with the 2 lollipop sticks or twigs and bind with the string. Hold the cross at the top of the yoghurt pot and secure with the string, leaving a loop that you can fix to a tree.
4). Cut lard into cubes and warm it to room temperature (not so hot it goes runny and runs out the bottom of your yoghurt pot!)
5). Mix bird seed and any other ingredients into the lard at about a ratio of 1 part lard to 2 parts seed.
6). Pour the mixture in to the yoghurt pot and refrigerate.
7). When the mixture is fully cooled, you can lift the yoghurt pot off the moulded feeder and hang from a tree outside your window!
8). Alternatively, you can use a pine cone to make your feeder, pushing the lard mixture into the gaps. A series of pine cone feeders makes a very pretty addition to your garden and the birds love ‘em!
Make sure you place your feeder somewhere cats don’t have easy access to. Check that your garden birds have a supply of fresh, unfrozen water every day, especially when the temperatures drop!
