Jan. 24, 2008

Nature Activity ~ Build Your Own Fruit Bowl Bird Feeder

I have been wanting to make this bird feeder with the kids for some time now but we just never seem to have enough hours in a day to do all of the projects we want to do *grin* But today was the day and I thought that I would share with you how to make your own bird feeder using a Pomelo as the bowl to hold your bird seed in :)


Start by finding your self the largest pomelo you can at the grocery store. They look just like a grapefruit but MUCH larger and cut the top of it. Cut a very shallow piece off the top and if you don't cut enough you can cut another thin piece off again until you can see the top of the fruit inside.


Now comes the fun part :) Start working your fingers in going around the fruit slowly pulling it away from the sides of the rind until you can get all the way to the bottom of it and pop the fruit right out of the rind. The pomelo has a really thick and spongy rind which is quite flexible. We made two of them and neither of them ripped or tore at all.


I wanted to show you just how big the hollowed rind and fruit are. They dwarf my tennis ball!


Time to get your peanut butter suet ready.
Melt:
1 pound of lard
2 cups of peanut butter
in a large pot until liquefied. Remove from heat.


Stir in:
4 cups of bird seed
2 cups of course ground hard wheat (consistency of chunky cornmeal)
or substitute cornmeal for the wheat
Mix together. You want it the consistency of soft chocolate chip cookie dough :) If it is to thin add more bird seed to it and then set aside to cool and firm up again.


While your bird feed is cooling you can get your cranberry strings attached to the pomelo. We threaded a large darning needle with butcher's twine and then pulled it through the side of the pomelo about 1 inch from the top and then knotted it in place. I put the twine down that far so that if the weight of the bird seed and birds landing on it started to stress the rind it would be quite a while before the twine pulled all the way to the top.


With your darning needle still attached you can start to string on fresh cranberries to the desired height you would like them.


If you are going to be hanging your feeder somewhere that would require a lot of string then you might want to make your strings of cranberries very long :)


As soon as you have your cranberry strings finished you can heap your bowl full of your yummy peanut butter suet. It smells so good! K really wanted to try it but I managed to talk him out of it *grin*


All that's left to do now is hang your fruity bird feeder outside and enjoy.
Have fun making yours!

For more show & tells or to join in check out Canadagirl's blog.