Bird Cakes

I got the things out to make these but then was distracted by a phonecall and by the time I was done I found Poppet had already begun without me. I found her trying to use the lard as a glue to stick pieces of twine onto the yoghurt pots. So yeah there was quite a bit of lard smeared about the place and over Poppet so it wasn't the best start to the morning!

Poppet playing with the lard

Is lard meant to smell horrible -or had I left it out the fridge too long? Either way it was a really yucky thing to work with and I don't think I want to buy it again. The birds will just have to make do with shop bought birdcakes in the future -not that they are even going near the bird cakes we lovingly made!

We followed the instructions on the RSPB website. We basically just squelched together birdseed and lard, it was pretty easy. Poppet got really stuck in and didn't seem bothered by the disgusting smell.

We then packed it into yoghurt pots. We had pre-threaded these with twine - I made a hole in the bottom of the pots and then Poppet tried hard to thread the twine through, but it was pretty difficult so I fed the twine through until it was just poking out, and then she would grab hold of it and pull it through.

We put it into the fridge to chill until the next day and then went out into the garden to find places to hang them. Which was surprisingly difficult as our garden has no trees in it. We hung a few on an old bird table, and the rest on the washing line poles and shed.

I have yet to see a single bird eat from one of our cakes.

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 1mos