Beautiful All-Natural Birdseed Wreaths
As soon as November hits, I get into wreath making mode… evergreen wreaths for the door and the shop, yummy seedy ones for the birds. These lovely birdseed wreath are easy to make, great for gift giving, and oh so festive for the holidays.
When I first started making wreaths for the birds, I decided to trial a few recipes to see which ones the birds would like the very best. Two of the wreaths were made with suet and other natural ingredients, but I also made that horrid one that keeps making it’s rounds on the internet, the one with flour, gelatin, and corn syrup.
To be fair, they all attracted birds, even that nasty one, but as I cannot in good conscience feed my birds corn syrup and white flour, I just stick to the two suet wreaths. For all three recipes, see at the bottom of this post.
This is the recipe for the wreath that I make most often, the one I (generally) sell here at the greenhouse. It has only four ingredients… suet, peanut butter, cornmeal, and a really good quality of wild birdseed, suitable for the birds in my area.
What you need to know about these ingredients…
Suet - If you buy the small bags of suet from the frozen meats section of the grocery store, you will get about 3 cups of nice, white, clean suet, with no bits of meat in it. It is ground up, so melts quickly and is super easy to use. This pre-rendered suet is dehydrated, so use a bit more than the recipe calls for to make a nice, fatty wreath that the birds love. The birds love suet!
If you get your suet straight from the butcher, ask him to grind it for you first to make easier to work with. To use this suet you will need to render it before making it into a wreath, meaning that you melt it down slowly and then strain it to remove all the bits of meat from it.
If you get your suet in a big chunk, chop it up nice and fine before you render it, so it melts faster and you get more of the fat out of it. You want to melt it on a really low heat, for a really long time, to keep it from scorching. The slower you go, the clearer the fat will be. This is less important for the birds than it is if you are using it to make your Christmas pudding ; )
If this really grosses you out (I hear ya), pick up some lard instead : )
Peanut Butter - You can use chunky or smooth, both work just fine. Make sure that you use a peanut butter that does not have xylitol (also sometimes called Birch Sugar) in it, as it is not good for birds and can be deadly for your pups. Pups love birdseed wreaths as much as the birds do!
Cornmeal - If you have no cornmeal, or prefer not to use it, replace it with small flake oats, or steel cut oats.
Birdseed - I use a birdseed that consists mostly of black oil sunflower seeds, which is great for birds everywhere, including here on the Canada’s west coast.
The best seeds, most liked by the birds, are sunflower, nyjer, safflower, peanuts, and then white millet. If you use the seed blends that are low in sunflowers, but high in white millet and corn, it might appeal to rodents more than birds. Eek! Also, millet is tossed to the ground for the ground pecking birds to eat, so you may end up with weeds sprouting in spring.
The Recipe..
1 cup of suet (1.5 cups if using the bagged suet)
1 cup of peanut butter
1 cup of cornmeal
4 cups of high quality birdseed
Melt your suet in a large pot at a low heat.
Add the peanut butter, stir till it is all melted.
Add the seeds and cornmeal, stir till well coated.
Put the mix into a bundt pan for a fancier wreath. Let harden in pan overnight, can also be placed into the fridge or freezer to set up faster.
When I was making these wreaths, I discovered that sometimes, after much love and attention from the birds, they would crack in two at the weak point. The birds like to start pecking up at the top, by the ribbon, and then work their way down. As the side gets narrow and weakens, it eventually breaks and falls to the ground.
When a wreath falls at my house, the evidence is quickly gobbled up by my two garden helpers, they love anything with peanut butter... and then, bespeckled remains grace the yard ; ) I had to come up with an organic strategy to ensure the wreaths stayed together for the birds to enjoy, not my pups.
After some googling, I found an idea to use a wire bent into a wreath shape. I knew I did not want to go that route, not practical for me to be bending many rings of wire. I then came upon one that was using bits of twigs tied together with florists wire … decided to use that idea but modified to use no wire.
I gathered some grapevines from the garden and twisted them together, making these wee little grapevine wreath forms. You can use any kind of thin, bendable branches that you have at home. Pop two of these 'wreaths' into the cake pan, stuff the warm seed mixture all around them… voila! Works like a hot dang. The rings are then totally biodegradable, no wires used at all.
I put some seed mix in the pan, then the smaller ring. Add some more seed mix, then the bigger ring, top it off with the rest of the seed mix. However, I have also just added both rings together in the middle of the mix and that works super fine, too.
After the wreath has set up, hang it from a branch, a shepherds hook, or on a fence. Mine are hung up against a really, really big cedar tree. Here you can see a bit of the bent grapevines showing, but it does not detract from the wreath at all.. looks very natural : )
You can also use a mini bundt pan to make wee little wreaths that are so super cute!
To make them extra special for the holidays, or for gifting, you can add a ‘frosting’ of peanuts.
Put the peanuts on the bottom first, add some suet to hold them together, fill the pan as usual.
Adorable : )
Hope you enjoy making these as much as I do.
Love feeding the birds for the holiday, and in the new year, too.
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