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 : )