Bird Seed Bell Recipe
Attracting birds to your yard or patio by providing food for them is fun and educational. Over time, you will be amazed at the variety of birds that come to visit your feeder. Bird seed bells are an attractive and inexpensive way to provide food for wild birds, and the bells can be easily made at home with a variety of seeds.
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Ingredients
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For each bird bell, you will need 1 cup of bird seed. Purchase a wild bird seed mix from the store, or use dried corn, sunflowers, millet, wheat or other edible seeds. Sunflower seeds are a favorite among birds, and appeal to many different species. To make the bird seed bell visually appealing and add extra nutrition for the birds, consider adding some brightly-colored dried fruit, such as dried cranberries, apricots or blueberries. You can also add nuts such as almonds, pecans or walnuts. Grind up larger nuts, seeds or pieces of fruit in a food processor, or blender. To make a bird-seed bell, you will need a small terracotta pot, a few eggs, a bendable wire and an oven-baking bag.
Process
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Combine the bird seed and any other ingredients you wish to add to the bell. Mix two beaten egg whites into each cup of bird seed mixture. The egg whites should be fluffy, but you don't have to beat them so much that they form peaks, as you would for a soufflé. Cut the wire so that it is a few inches longer than the pot is tall. Line the terracotta pot with an oven baking bag and bend the wire into a corkscrew shape at one end---leave the other end straight. Press the birdseed and egg white mixture into the lined pot and flatten the top. Push the wire down into the bird seed, straight end down, until the wire protrudes out of the bottom of the pot a few inches; the wire should not stick out of the top. Bake the bell in the oven at about 250 degrees F for approximately one and a half hours. Remove the bell and allow it to cool.
Use
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Carefully remove the bell from the pot and peel off the oven bag. Bend the protruding end of the wire into a hook and hang the bird seed bell outside from a tree branch or metal hook. It may take several weeks for the birds to find this special treat, so be patient. It may help to scatter some loose seed on the ground around the bell to help attract the bird's attention. Once you start feeding birds, they come to rely on you as a food source, so keep supplying them with fresh bird seed bells or loose seed.
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