We’ve recently moved to the countryside from the city and one of the things we just love about country life is the abundance and variety of wild birds we get on our bird feeders. We could just sit and watch them for hours!
Feeding the birds is something we do everyday now and it’s been really interesting for the whole family to watch all the different bird species, learn their names and a little about their behaviour and eating habits.
We’ve discovered that the wild birds have very definite favourites when it comes to their dinner! Peanuts are loved by the blue tits, meal worms by the robins, bread by the wood pigeons, seeds by the sparrows, and meat and cat food scraps are adored so much by the blackbirds that they’ll even be bold enough to steal them out of the cat food bowl!
Feeding the wild birds and making DIY bird feeders with the children is such a lovely hands on way to get the kiddies interacting with and caring about nature and in the colder months especially, your little feathered friends will sure be grateful for your help.
With Valentine’s Day around the corner couldn’t resist a bit of birdy love with these Heart Shaped Bird Feeders!
Supplies For Your DIY Bird Feeder
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- Hooped Cereal e.g. Cheerios (Lots of stores offer their own bargain brand.) (Make sure it is a low sugar variety.)
- 12″ Long Pipe Cleaners
- Ribbon for Hanging
How To Make A DIY Bird Feeder
This homemade bird feeder craft is so easy and virtually prep free! To get things ready for the children I just poured some Cheerios into a bowl and set that onto a tray with the long pipe cleaners. Easy peasy!
We folded our pipe cleaner in half to find the middle and then sat and chatted while we threaded the cereal on. It’s such a lovely craft to sit and relax with and all that threading is great for building fine motor skills too.
The pipe cleaners are fairly rigid so it’s quite easy for even very little hands to thread. If I am doing this craft with young toddlers and they are finding it tricky to hold the pipe cleaner with one hand and thread with the other then I stick the pipe cleaner onto the table with a bit of play dough or plasticine so that it’s held in a vertical position. That way even your littlest bird lover can join in and just concentrate on threading the cereal.
Once the pipe cleaners were pretty much full of threaded Cheerios we curled the ends over to make our DIY bird feeder into a heart shape. Then we secured the bird food into place by twisting the two ends of the pipe cleaners together.
Finally we tied a bit of ribbon onto the homemade bird feeder so that we could hang it up outside.
Where To Hang Your Bird Feeder
These homemade bird feeders are very light so they can blow about a lot in the wind which can actually frighten the birds away. We found ours worked best for the birds when we hung it up in the bushes or trees where it moved around a lot less and the wild birds could perch on nearby branches to peck at the cereal.
Bird Feeder Craft Differentiation:
- For younger children stick the pipe cleaner onto the table top with plasticine or play dough to hold it vertical. This can help them thread the cereal bird food on more easily.
- Older children might like to experiment with different designs for their homemade bird feeders. Perhaps they’d like to twist a number of pipe cleaners together to make a bigger bird feeder or a different shaped bid feeder. We made these heart bird feeders with Valentine’s Day in mind but we also had fun at Christmas time making DIY bird feeders shaped like stars and Christmas trees!
This bird feeder craft is a lovely simple activity to do with children of all ages this Valentine’s Day. It’s lots of fun and a great way to encourage children to care about nature and learn about the birds local to you.
Do your children have a favourite bird that visits your garden? Ours has got to be the Blackbird, our cheeky cat food thief!