Frugal Family Birdwatching Fun

My toddler loves birds. I'll often find him trying to run after them in the yard. At the zoo the birds are by far his favorite. He could sit forever and watch the flamingos. I decided it would be fun to try to attract a few more near the window of our dining room. It's our favorite place to sit and have a snack and he loves pointing and making bird sounds anytime he sees one.

I knew we could make the traditional peanut butter pine cone birdseed bird feeder but we don't have any pine trees in our yard, so we'd have to go hunting for pine cones. Instead I ran across a suggestion that you could use a toilet paper roll for the same thing. This was perfect because we have plenty of those.

Here's what you do:

You'll need an empty toilet paper tube, peanut butter, plate, spreader, birdseed and string of some sort to hang it up.

1. Pour a bit of birdseed onto a plate

2. Cover your toilet paper roll with peanut butter

3. Roll your peanut butter covered toilet paper tube in birdseed.

4. Run a string through the tube, it it, and hang on a tree.

I also saw that you could do the same thing but with a bagel. I'm very excited to see if this attracts any birds within a closer view.

I'm hoping to try this homemade hummingbird feeder. I haven't seen any hummingbirds around so we'll see if it works. They truly are my favorite bird, it would be fun to have a few around.