Bird Treats

I woke up with a terrible headache in the wee hours of the morning - one of the behind-your eye, into-your-temple, along-your-jaw, down-your-neck and across-your-shoulder ones that feels debilitating. Lucky for me, we had an activity planned at a local nature center this morning, so JediBoy had lots of fun with minimal involvement from his poor, sickly mama.

When we arrived at the center, we had a few minutes to explore their two museum rooms before the program started. JediBoy had fun being able to read the tags and informative signs. He was fascinated by the scat display!

The samples were numbered, and then the labeled pictures of animals had matching numbers on the back. He enjoyed the display of skulls too.

What did BabyGirl like?

The moose head on the wall! There were lots of others too, including a pronghorn, which JediBoy had just read about in a book the other day.

Once all the kids were there, we made our way to the downstairs meeting room. The presenter gave a talk for about 15 minutes about feeding birds, using mounted birds as examples. We got to see most of the typical feeder birds from our area - blue jay, cardinal, chickadee, mourning dove, junco, hairy and downy woodpeckers, starling and crow, sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks (who aren’t there for the seed!). The presenter also talked about what’s in different blends of birdseed and what to look for when you’re buying it.

Then the kids got down & dirty. They made four different kinds of bird treats.

JediBoy mixes cornmeal into peanut butter and shortening. They stirred and mixed, and then kneaded, until it was the consistency of playdough.

They made balls of the mixture and wrapped them up in netting, and made similar feeders from straight suet.

JediBoy pokes a piece of yarn through a hole in the center of a slice of corn cob to make a hanging corn feeder.

Last but not least, everyone’s favorite! Slather a pine cone (actually a spruce cone!) with peanut butter and roll in birdseed.

JediBoy had a good time (and learned that he liked the taste of peanut butter mixed with shortening and cornmeal - ugh!) and was very interested and involved both in the presentation and in the museum displays upstairs. I drove us straight home afterwards and took some medicine for my head, which took an hour to kick in, then made me woozy for a bit, and has now made me sick to my stomach, but at least the headache is gone. BabyGirl is napping, and JediBoy is watching a new Hard Hat Harry dvd that we bought at the latest Barnes & Noble Buy 2 Get 1 Free DVD Sale.  The snow is starting to fall and I’m very ready to tuck in for the evening.