Birdseed Ornaments and Wildlife Tree

Creating birdseed ornaments with kids is a great fall craft. With the leaves falling from the trees and winter on it’s way, dress up the bare branches on a tree in your yard with some treats for wildlife! This is an easy and fun craft to create for your own yard or to make as a gift and the local birds and squirrels will surely appreciate your craftiness as well!

Now that fall is in full swing and winter in on it’s way, I am finding some fun ideas for the kids to create indoors and making these cute ornaments. A box of these homemade ornaments makes a great holiday gift for any wildlife lover as well so you an get started early on ideas for Christmas giving. The supplies needed are minimal and you can choose a few festive cookie cutters to use. My kids love any craft that can be a bit messy and squishing their little hands into birdseed goop definitely gets their interest!

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There are many variations of recipes for this craft, some use cornstarch which is not recommended. Gelatin is a completely safe product to use for birds and other wildlife whereas cornstarch adds unwanted sugar. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, flavored gelatin or cornstarch can add high levels of sugar that can be toxic to animals. So stick with the basic unflavored gelatin for this craft as to not harm our feathered and furry friends. You can out some of their other fun crafts for birds here.

Fun DIY Bird Feeders

Here are the supplies you will need:

• 2-3 cups of birdseed
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 2 packets of unflavored gelatin (this is safe for animals to eat)
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• Cookie Cutters
• wax paper and baking sheet
• twine
• drinking straws or skewers (can cut into thirds for shorter pieces)
• cooking spray

Directions:

1. Pour the gelatin packets into a bowl and mix with the 1/2 cup boiling water until completely dissolved. It’s best to have adult supervision for this step so little hands don’t get burned by the water.
2. Next, pour in the birdseed a mix with a spoon or spatula until the seed is coated with the gelatin, then can fold in the cranberries.
3. Line a baking tray with wax paper and arrange all the cookie cutters onto the tray. I recommend spraying the cutters with a little bit of cooking spray so the ornaments come out easier once dried and cooled.
4. Next – the fun part. Spoon the birdseed mixture into the cookie cutters. You can use a spoon to pack it down if you prefer, or put a small spritz of cooking spray on your hands and push the seed down into the cookie cutters. The more it is packed into there the better the ornament will hold up once put on the tree.
5. After the cookie cutters are all filled, Place a piece of drinking straw or skewer piece in where the string will go. This way it will dry with a hole already made to hang it from.
6. Let the ornaments set overnight in a cool, dry place. Once they are ready, pop them out of the cutter and tie a piece of twine to hang it.

Now the craft is ready to hang out on the tree or wrap up in a cute little box or basket for giving!

Another fun idea to try is to create a Wildlife Tree! My kids made this craft for their Grandparents to put outside their picture window and it was a big hit! Not only was it fun to make, but is attracted birds, squirrels, deer, and may other kinds of wildlife.

For this craft, the kids used pinecones rolled in peanut butter and birdseed, dry cereal like cheerios, and fresh cranberries and orange slices. They made ornaments with all of these materials and I made a “tree” for them to hang them on. I had a few branches laying in our yard so I trimmed them up and made a base for them in a garden pot with some plaster mix and water. Once that set, the tree was ready to decorate and would be strong enough to stand on it’s own in the yard. We covered the plaster base with some pine cuttings, tied a festive bow around it with a gold cardboard star on top and it was ready to go! The kids were very proud of this gift they created and were excited to see if outside of the picture window. Of course, the wildlife loved it as well!

I hope you enjoy these wildlife craft ideas and get to try them out with your kids. Check out some of my other crafts, recipes, and camping posts on Pinterest as well! Happy Crafting!