My little boy loves birds and nature and one of his favourite things is to sit in the conservatory and watch the different birds swoop down for some food from our bird feeders so we decided to make our own.
We used peanut butter to stick the mixed bird seed to the toilet roll tubes which was really easy to do however a few days later the feeders had gone moldy and had been attracting flies so you could probably only leave them out for a couple of days. It was so simple to do though but make sure you scoop some of the peanut butter into a bowl and add it from there, we didn’t do that so the jar got bits of bird seed in and we had to throw the rest away.
We decided to try and make some shaped bird feeders using cookie cutters so we Googled and found a recipe using clear gelatin. I had to go and search for some and I think I got it from ASDA in the end but it would have been much easier and cheaper to use lard.
We melted one sachet of gelatin with a small amount of boiling water and then stirred until it was dissolved. My son then added the bird seed and mixed it all together. He then pressed it into the cookie cutters and we added straws to make holes for putting the string through.
The gelatin seemed to ooze out a little so I think we may have added too much. You need to turn the feeders half way through setting so a couple of hours in as this ensures the gelatin doesn’t sink to the bottom. You can either leave the feeders in a cool place preferably overnight or pop them in the fridge for a few hours before hanging them out.
Our feeders were a little heavy as we had used large cookie cutters so a couple didn’t hang on the tree and had to just be broken up and put on the bird table, aim to use medium to small sized cookie cutters and you should be fine.
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