Making hanging birdseed cakes

One of my favourite things about winter is feeding the birds. I love seeing little flocks of waxeyes and finches flitting around and chatting to each other while they eat. I have two feeders in the garden, but now that we have bigger kitchen windows I wanted to be able to feed them right outside. My little apple tree was in the perfect spot, but it's branches aren't strong enough to hold a feeding tray... so I came up with an easy way to make hanging birdseed cakes.

I've posted about my birdseed cakes before, and I usually make a batch of them and put them in my other tray feeders. It's so easy though just to add a wire hanger and then you can put them anywhere.

You just need birdseed, fat or dripping, some wire to bend and some pliers to bend it with, silicone muffin trays and a large microwaveable jug.

First cut 12 lengths of wire about 30 cm long. The wire just needs to be thick enough to hold its shape when there is a bit of weight hanging from it.

Bend the wire into a rough spiral shape with a hooked end. The spiral just needs to be small enough to fit in your muffin pans.

Melt the dripping in the microwave and then add the birdseed. Spoon or pour it into the muffin trays over the wire. Put the trays into the freezer for about half an hour, then just pop the birdseed cakes out. If you have too much birdseed mixture for your trays you can just remelt it and do another batch when the first one is done. Keep birdseed cakes in your freezer, or go crazy and decorate a whole tree!

Intermission

Time to interrupt the garden tours for a brief update on my garden. Look, I've got flowers on my peanut! I'd only recently transplanted it into a bigger planter and I wasn't expecting any action for ages.

The planter is rubbish though. I bought it from The Warehouse and it's basically this big bag with holes cut in the top. I thought it would be good for the peanut because I don't know how big it will get and I can cut more holes if it needs to spread, but ugh I hate this planter bag. It's ugly and flops everywhere, it's impossible to move when full, and when watering the water just runs off the top of the plastic and drains away outside - this is unacceptable waste under water restrictions!

I think I might carefully remove the peanut and capsicum and put them into pots this weekend. I'll probably have to slice up the bag to get the potting mix out.

Also, would anyone like to come and shoot blackbirds in my garden? You can use a shotgun or a guided missile, I don't really care, just take the buggers out. Look at the mess they've made. This was a carefully mulched area, and they've had a field day tossing it all over the paths. You can see that they have actually gone all around the edges making sure as much mess is spread over the paths as possible. They do this anywhere that I spread mulch. Sometimes I put down bird netting, but I have to take it up once the seedlings get big.

Looks like Mr Lui is failing in his duties... I better go have a word with him.

(The second last garden tour will be up later tonight!)