At Tiggywinkles Pre-School, looking after our environment is very important. We thought we’d share a recipe to help our little feathered friends during this cold snap.

Making a bird cake or bird pudding mixture is very easy and will help you to attract birds. Peanuts and seeds such as sunflower seeds, kitchen scraps such as bits of bacon rind or hard cheese can all be used. Traditionally people have used suet or lard to make bird-cake, but you could also mix in soft sunflower margarine. If using lard or a hard vegetable based suet, you will need to melt it, but be careful not to put too much in the pan and keep a watchful eye over it to avoid any risk of fire.

Mix the ingredients together until you have got a firm mixture which you can then put into containers such as a half coconut shell or plastic tub to be hung in a tree or you can shape the mixture around pieces of string.

Another interesting alternative is to create a log feeder by drilling a number of shallow holes, about the width of a 10p piece in a length of old log. This can be hung in a tree and birds including woodpeckers will be attracted in to feed.

The fat mixture can also be smeared on the bark of trees as a treat for long tailed tits.

The snow has given us the opportunity to try out our tracking skills…..can you guess what may have made these tracks in the snow? We had fun guessing!