T's bird friends

T has always liked birds, seagulls at the beach ( might be because he saw one fly and steal a chip from my hand once), the cockatiel called Sam at Willowbank (maybe because he's heard him say hello and 'wanna cracker' ) and the birds at home that he sees eating from the feeder we put in 'his' tree together.

He likes watching them and is the sort of kid that really pays attention to things that interest him. A few days ago on a long car ride he yelled out that he'd spotted a group of birds making a Y in the sky as they flew- it was cute how excited he was.

A few days ago he reminded me that we hadn't filled our bird feeder for a while. He'd made a pine cone bird feeder at pre school and told me about it when he found a pine cone in Hagley park yesterday. It's pouring with rain today so we thought we'd make one.

We used:

peanut butter

mixed wild bird seed

cornflakes

pine cone

strong string

a spatula

a plate

Tie the string to the top pf the cone. We chose to tie it this way up as I thought the smaller birds could sit on it more easily while they ate.

Spread the peanut butter on with the spatula and push some into the gaps of the pinecone. You don't need to use heaps of peanut butter- we used about 2  tablespoons.

Roll the cone in the bird seed so it sticks to the peanut butter. We pushed some cornflakes into the holes- you don't need these but T thought they might like them and I agreed.

Hang it in a tree and look out the window.  You won't be waiting to see the birds snacking- ours was gone in a day : )

milk bottle bird homes

I found this is the lastest Resene Habitat magazine. I'm quite partial to the odd paint test pot so knew we'd be able to rustle two of these up for our birdie friends ( especially with 35% off test pots until the end of October). Here's the link to full instructions resene one for the birds. We adapted ours a bit.

We went to Resene and I let the kid's choose a colour they liked. M chose a lovely dark pink called sensual red and T chose, no surprises here, a yellow called gorse. 

I used an icecream container for M's roof as I burnt myself with the glue gun putting T's little roof tiles on and wasn't doing another one that way- ow! 

I wonder if any birds will venture in?

for the birds

I've decided to try and do something from my 'Kids' pinterest board every Friday ( our at home day). This morning we made bird feeders with the last of our Cheerios. The photos pretty much sum it up- great hand eye co-ordination practise for them- and they snacked at the same time. We hung them outside their rooms and  I love that they sat quietly at their windows waiting for birds to come.