How to make your own bird feeder

This month we’re taking part in the 30 Days Wild challenge. My children are pretty wild and outdoorsy so this seemed like a great challenge for them. This week we had the added bonus of taking part in a family litter pick to mark Blue Peter’s 60th birthday. Be Plastic Clever 60 or #BPC60 is the brain child of Kids Against Plastic who are running a competition to find the best litter pick photos. CBBC presenter Naomi Wilkinson came along to my daughter’s school to talk to them about the impact on the environment and our health caused by continued use of single use plastic.

My daughter loved taking part in the litter pick around our local area, and we roped in my 8 year old too. After we had collected a bag of rubbish we went back to school and placed the rubbish to make the number 60 and she had her photo taken with Naomi Wilkinson and all the other kids. It was a great way for the kids to learn more about taking care of the environment.

The challenge for the second week of #30dayswild was to make your own bird feeder. We love to attract birds to our little garden and have made a few. Our garden has been full of starlings recently who have all been feeding their babies. Now they’ve flown on I’m hoping the robins and blue tits will come back. It’s pretty easy to make your own bird feeder. All you will need is the following:

dried bird seed
vegetable Atora fat
yoghurt pots, coconut shells

I melted half the Vegetable Atora fat in a microwaveable container in the microwave until the fat pellets melted. Then we mixed a generous portion of bird seed into the fat, being super careful not to splash any of the fat on to us.

My daughter carefully filled up our containers with the mixture. We used yoghurt pots, an empty coconut shell as well as an enamel mug. She spooned the mixture in and we pressed it down with the back of the spoon.