Homemade Suet

I've been researching homemade suet. The cost of suet isn't high, low of $.69 per block. However, our birds can go through a block a day!

For suet we would first need the suet, aka: beef fat, bacon/pork drippings, lard, but making sure 'meat' is removed.  I've also found we can add quick oats, peanut butter, honey,  white or whole wheat flour, unsalted chopped nuts, shelled bird seeds, dried fruit pieces, crushed dried eggshells or oyster shells, or degerminated cornmeal.

I'm hoping this weekend or over the holiday break I can find the time to try out a homemade suet with a few of the ingredients added to the collection of drippings I have saved up. Will let you know what I use and how it goes when I find the time!

Have you made homemade suet for your bird friends??



Hummingbird Heaven

I love-love hummingbirds. They are tiny, colorful and fun to watch. While I was getting Cole a snack last week, I had 3 buzzing around the Hummingbird/Oriole feeder. Normally they are pretty territorial and don't eat all together from the feeder. Not the other night! With the stormy weather the little fairy-birds all ate together... all 3! It was amazing! So amazing I decided not to move and chance them flying away, even for my camera. So no pictures of the 3 eating but I have been able to get some pretty good pictures of the hummingbirds. They are quick little buggers though and hard to get to pose for the camera!

This past weekend we hung a Fuchsia plant on the front porch as a second source of food for the hummingbirds. The feeder hangs in the back of the house. We also planted Columbine which are supposed to attract hummingbirds. Hopefully they find these in the back garden too! We have seen at least 4 different hummingbirds. Not sure how many we will see this summer but if we can keep up with 4 maybe next year we'll have 6 or 8!

Tonight I got to see just how territorial the little birds can be! It is very, very windy, the Fuchsia in the front is blowing around too much for them to eat from. So there was a 2x2 battle! One would come up the feeder and one would chase it away. A different bird would come up to the feeder and the fourth chased it away! Fun to watch, but I almost had to intervene in fear they would hurt each other. We are going to get a second feeder, a real hummingbird feeder, for the back yard so they will have three feeding spots and will hopefully share better than they did tonight!