In order to stay warm during the colder seasons, birds need to eat high-fat-content foods such as sunflower seeds. And they even like to eat fat itself – or more specifically – suet.
What You Need
- Access to a freezer
- Bird seed
- Bowl
- Cookie cutters
- Cookie sheets
- Large paper clips
- Optional – fresh or dried cranberries, pepitas, sunflower seeds
- String or twine
- Suet
- Wax paper
What You Do
- Mix your ingredients and prepare your work area.
Suet is beef or mutton fat. You can purchase it at your grocery store by asking your meat counter. You can also buy it at stores that sell bird feeding products. Sometimes it comes with bird seed already mixed in. Ideally suet should be refrigerated.
Spread out a few sheets of wax paper on cookie sheets.
In the bowl, mix suet with bird seed, using your hands or a spoon.
- Squish the suet into the cookie shapes.
If you have cranberries – squish them into the shapes as decoration. For example, cranberries make great buttons on a suet man.
Gently lift the cookie cutter off the suet.
- Put a paper clip hook in each ornament so you can hang it up.
Bend your paper clip open. Squish the bottom half into the head of the suet man and leave half hanging out. This is what you will use to hang the suet man outside.
Put the suet men in the freezer until they are solid.
- Hang your ornaments in a tree outside.
Suet will go rancid if it is too warm outside, so only do this activity when the temperatures are cold.
