Bird Feeders

I signed the kids up for summer reading at our library and during our weekly library trip I decided to pick up a book on birds that are indigenous to our area.  It's just a simple field guide with lots of pictures to help you identify what you are seeing.  We have the most excellent vantage point to see the birds as our kitchen sits high up and there are trees right outside our sitting area window.  We have seen so many kinds of birds living here that I had never even noticed before, so I decided the kids might like to make some little bird feeders to hang on the limbs right outside our window and watch for the birds.  (Yes, I do know it is the wrong season technically for bird feeders.)  I thought it would be neat to do this project twice a year to see the different types of birds we get during warm and cold weather.  The field guide also tells us which birds are year round, migratory, summer, or winter birds for our area.

All you need is:

• an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll tube
• peanut butter
• bird seed
• field guide for local birds

Coat the paper towel roll tubes with peanut butter all the way around.

 

Then roll the coated tube in bird seed or mash the seeds into the peanut butter.

Now just find a nice viewing area and keep your book in that area.

See how good that view is??  Unfortunately, we still have yet to see any birds feeding.  We have had bad thunderstorms every night this week and it started pouring about an hour after we put our feeders up.  They are still up, but they haven't been needing as much to eat I'm sure as the worms are probably plentiful with this wet weather.  This may not be the best time of year in retrospect, but I think my middle child is learning a lesson in patience from this.  He has probably been the most excited of the kids about seeing the birds, too.

The birds finally came.  This is a tufted titmouse.  Bet you never heard of that before.  ;)