FEED THE BIRDS FOR PEANUTS

Winter's coming.  It's arriving slowly here on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire with temperatures sometimes in the teens but with lashings of rain and wind howling like a banshee much of the time.  I've seen long term weather forecasts of a dreadful winter ahead with lots of snow; months of it, the worst since 1966/67.  Oh, great!  Not.  For a change I'm hoping they get the forecast wrong.  My first thoughts, apart from stocking my cupboards full of food and what-not, and getting all the cat litter and cat food in for Alfie, the resident Ragdoll cat, that we might need in a siege of snow is to turn my thoughts to the wild birds.  Today I've made fat balls, the way I do every winter.  They cost peanuts compared to some of the ones I see in the shops.

Home made fat and seed balls - 2013

This year I made eight fat-balls with 250g of melted beef lard.  I poured in enough mixed table seed and cheap raisins into the fat so that it was a sloppy mix.  As the lard starts to solidify, that is the time to get your hands gooey and start moulding the mix into round shapes.  I have a special plastic thing that holds three balls but you can also form the balls around string so that you can suspend them individually.  I saw someone on YouTube or somewhere, TV?, using plastic cups as moulds with a string running through the centre.  I don't think the birds care as long as they can get to the fat and seeds.  This year I've hung mine from the washing line.





I made rice balls one year but they weren't popular.  It was the seed and fat that the birds wanted. 

Fat-ball holder in green plastic - 2013