Calling all Bird Lovers:
A while back, I wrote a post on attracting birds to the garden. It’s around winter that food supplies are scant in the Southern Hemisphere garden. Birds have to forage to survive. So yesterday I decided it was well overdue for me to make my annual bird feeding cups. Not exactly my own original idea, but one worth sharing as they are easy peasy to make, and provide endless hours of viewing fun.
1. Scrape about 1 TBspn slithers of beeswax off your block.
What you need:
* Old tea cups (second hand shops are a great source of cups!)
* Beeswax
* Coconut oil
* Wild bird seed
* Ribbons or string for decoration
2. Prepare the cups…..
Simply shave a few slithers of beeswax off and melt it in a small pot. Add the coconut oil (I used some Passed Best Before Date) and blend into the beeswax.
Mix tablespoons of bird seed into the coconut/beeswax blend and pack into the tea cups. Fill right to the top. As coconut oil is not temperature stable, I use beeswax just to stabilise it a bit, or else the coconut oil will melt on a hot sunny day and all your seeds will pour out the cup with the melted oil blend! Pack the bird seed oil mix firmly into the cups, pressing down to bond them together.
3. Melt the wax and coconut oil, blending together.
4. Mix the seed and oil blend together.
5. Fill all your cups, packing the seed mix down firmly.
6. Add ribbon and string decoration.
7. Hang your seed cups and wait for the magic to begin…..a flurry of wings and feeding frenzy.
Now I wait with baited breath for my feathered friends to discover the cup and begin the winter feeding party. Let the fun begin!
