This Is For the Birds!

We have some fine feathered friends living here in our neighborhood. Besides the beautiful wrens and cardinals we have a wide variety of woodpeckers that drop by each day for their meals. They range in size from the little downy woodpeckers to the large northern flickers. We used to have a pileated woodpecker as a regular visitor but we haven't seen him in a couple of years. Having him staring in the kitchen window was enough to give anyone a start!

My woodpecker friends are a lot like toddlers. They are early risers who let you know when they are ready for their breakfast. When we had toddlers in our household they would knock insistently on the bedroom door around daybreak until a sleepy parent got out of bed and fixed the food. Now we have birds knocking on the wood siding right outside our bedroom window about the time that the sun begins peaking over the horizon. Groan!

Consequently, I try to keep suet cakes in stock and to make sure that the window feeder is full before I go to bed at night. With the recent cold-and-snowy weather that we've been experiencing my bird-brained neighbors have been going through the suet cakes at an alarming rate! Thankfully, I've developed a recipe for using some of the odds-and-ends on hand to keep the feeder filled and the early morning window-knocking to a minimum.

Do you compost? I do. It's a good way of returning plant-based materials back to the soil in flower and vegetable gardens. But one of the cooking by-products that shouldn't be composted is animal fats. I recycle those by making my own suet cakes. Here is my recipe:

• 1 cup fat (bacon grease, lard, beef drippings)
• 2 1/2 cup of grain (I bake bread so I always have whole grain wheat, winter wheat, rye, or cornmeal on hand)
• 1/4 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
• 1/2 cup bird seed, millet, or sunflower seeds(The stuff that goes in the regular bird feeders)

Melt the fat and peanut butter in a saucepan. Add the grain and cook until bubbly. Remove from heat and add the seeds. If you have a suet basket and have previously bought commercially prepared cakes be sure to save 2 or 3 of the plastic cases to use as molds. Otherwise, cool until the mix is hard enough to handle and roll into balls. Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze until ready to use.

If you have leftover pieces of nuts, peanuts, blueberries, raisins, or cherries they can be added at the same time as the seed. I had a piece of left-over blueberry pie that I broke up and added to my last batch. I've had fun watching the birds digging through the fat to reach those pieces of berries.

Just remember to keep that feeder full once you take the birds on to raise. Like toddlers, they don't seem to understand the words, "No! It's too early! Go back to bed!"