Wildlife Christmas Tree
It’s fun to turn an existing outdoor tree into a Christmas present for local wildlife and adds real variety and excitement to your winter garden. Remember that different sized animals and birds eat different sized food and that the smallest birds – sparrows for example, can’t cope with hulking great goodies, while squirrels are well able to untie a fat ball and carry it off with them!
- Using a needle and thin string or garden twine, string together different kinds of grapes. Add variety, choice of selection and colour by alternating grapes, raisins and cranberries.
- String home-popped popcorn without salt, butter or sugar, using a needle and thread. Add variety by stringing cranberries with the popcorn. Very popular with squirrels!
- Cut thin slices of apples and oranges. Hang each slice separately, from colourful ribbons, all over the tree. This is very popular with finches and blue-tits.
- Purchase some net material and fill it with any kind of bird seed. It is helpful to add some finely crushed eggshells to the seed mixture to supplement the bird’s diet with calcium. Tie a red or green ribbon at the top and hang it from the tree.
- Collect large pine cones. Mix peanut butter with oatmeal to a thick consistency and wipe the mixture inside and around the pine cone before rolling in bird seed. Hang it with a ribbon.
- Suet is a popular bird food, you can buy suet balls from pet shops or melt beef fat or let it cool. Add bird seed, peanut butter, fruit or unsweetened, unsalted muesli. Mesh onion bags make good suet containers and are easy to hang.
- Instead of throwing away table scraps think of creative ways to hang them by stringing them together or putting them in a net bag to hang from the tree.
Wildlife tree photograph by Fozzi 999, used under a creative commons attribution licence.