This is for the birds!

Beautiful spring weather means lots of birds in our backyard…all coming to feast at our bird feeders and take a swim in the bird bath. We love to watch the birds almost as much as our dog loves to chase them. But luckily for the birds, the dog is too slow and too fat to ever come close to catching them!

With the exception of the cardinals, we don’t know a thing about what types of birds visit us. Our observations are limited to things like “look at that black bird…check out that pretty brown bird.” I would like to say that we spent the afternoon studiously looking up bird species and identifying ours, but we are pretty content with our generic color descriptions. What my daughter and I decided to do instead was make birdseed biscuits for them. My guess is that the birds probably appreciate that more than finding out their “real” names.

There are many birdseed treat crafts out there. Most include some sort of peanut butter and a pine cone. Nothing against peanut butter or pine cones, but I found a craft  that was a little different. I came across it in the Family Fun magazine. This is a really great and inexpensive magazine that is always full of fun ideas for crafts, activities, and parties. There are also lots of great parenting articles and kid friendly recipes as well. You can also find the complete instructions at their website under birdseed biscuit.

This is a pretty simple recipe that consists of only 3 ingredients…birdseed, flour, and water. We broke out the mixing bowl and my daughter happily mixed everything together.

Always the fun part

The instruction calls for the birdseed mixture to be packed into cookie cutters and then baked. I chose two pretty spring shaped ones…a tulip and a butterfly. My daughter easily scooped out the mixture and packed it into the cutters with minimal help from me.  She was thrilled to be able to handle this pretty much by herself.

Pretty fancy for birdseed

The biscuits require baking at 175 degrees for an hour. My oven model is of the modest variety (i.e. cheap) and doesn’t have a fancy digital setting on it. So, I baked them at around 200 degrees and they came out  just fine. I let them cool for a little while before stringing them with some ribbon. Then it was off to the backyard to find a good spot to hang them.

Our butterfly birdseed biscuit

Of course my daughter wanted to hold the biscuits and have the birds come to her…as she cheerfully called out “here birds..here’s your treat birds!” After explaining to her that the birds wouldn’t come with the dog salivating next to her, ready to pounce, she agreed to hang them on the fence.

The next morning we noticed the tulip biscuit was gone…bird or squirrel? We will never know. But two birds sat on the fence eyeing the butterfly biscuit. I’m quite certain brown bird and off white bird will be happily enjoying their treat soon!

Tags: bird craft, birdseed biscuit, spring craft, toddler craft