Pine Cone Bird Feeder

 Now that we live somewhere with some outdoor space, it's been fun to get Erik outside and learning about the nature around him. We love to observe the wildlife in our yard; mostly deer and LOTS of birds. The only problem is the birds like to hang out on the far side of the yard from our front porch so it's hard to get a good look at them. I decided we needed a way to lure them a bit closer so we can observe them better, so we decided to make pine cone bird feeders. We don't have any pine trees right here close, so we went for a drive up the canyon, played in the creek for a while, then came home with our pine cones.

These are so easy to make. Take a pine cone, smear the scales with peanut butter (or suet or shortening if you can't/don't want to use peanut butter)...

...roll the PB covered pine cone in bird seed...

...attach a string and hang outside. 

 Now for the sake of honesty, I have to tell you that we didn't ever see any birds eating off our pine cones, but that is because the deer got to them first. I guess next time we do this we'll have to hang them really high in the tree so that ONLY the birds can reach them. Oh well, we like watching the deer too.

I have plans to expand on this activity. I want to make a little booklet with the outline of a bird on each page. Then as we see new birds Erik can color the bird to resemble what we see in our yard and we can keep a record of the birds he's learned to identify.