Make Meisenknödel & bird food yourself - ideas and recipes

• Everything about the right bird food
• Offer natural bird food
• Make birdseed yourself
• Recipe 1: Make the dumplings yourself
• Recipe 2: Bird Food Cookies

Not all native birds in the cool season, the vastness to winter in the sunny and warm south. In fact, many of the feathered creatures stay in place from January to December, trying to find food on the frosty ground - a difficult feat for the wingtips. For this reason, we should support robins, blackbirds, finches, tits and Co. in the foraging. This guide will provide you with basic information as well as various birdseed production recipes that can help you preserve biodiversity!

In many places, the habitats for plants and animals are in very poor condition - a fact that threatens the existence of numerous genera. Even the birds that live in our climes have more and more difficulty surviving in the long term. In that sense, the need to nourish the flying creatures does not only apply to the late autumn and winter months. In some regions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland a year-round feeding of wild birds makes sense - as well as the offering of breeding sites. Through your commitment, you contribute to the conservation of a stable (re) n and diverse (r) bird population. Choose from the following tips and instructions your favorites and make the birds in your area happy!

Everything about the right bird food

Before you dare to prepare delicious bird food, you should read our basic information. To do the birds really good, it is important to know their food preferences.

There are many different wild birds, which of course do not all eat the same food. You can roughly divide them into two groups: the soft and the grain eaters.

a) Eater: The Eater include, for example, robins, blackbirds, thrushes, woodpeckers, starlings and wrens. The food of these birds is mainly composed of fruits and insects. Therefore, in autumn and winter they prefer soft food in the form of berries, nuts, oatmeal, spelled and wheat.

b) Grain eaters: Bird species such as titmice, finches and sparrows belong to the grain eaters. These birds owe their name to their more powerful bills, which make it possible to feed them with grains. Grain eaters eat seeds, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, unpeeled seeds and all kinds of nuts.

Find out which birds live in your immediate vicinity. With the knowledge you can adjust the feed supply accordingly. Otherwise, your well-intentioned help may remain unaffected at the feeding place.

Following the introductory theoretical tips, the practical side will be explained: with several tips and recipes, we will explain how you can provide birds with food in an appropriate way.

Offer natural bird food

A relatively easy way to make both birds and yourself a joy, is to plant in its own garden so-called Vogelnährwürölze . These are extremely nutritious for your feathered friends - and a decorative eye-catcher for you. Here are some tips:

• Plant the bird twigs as deep as they were in the nursery (recognizable by the brownish discoloration of the root collar). This ensures optimized growth conditions.
• If you are dealing with root products, you should cut back only broken or injured roots smoothly. We advise against a general pruning of the roots.
• More expensive trees in the container should be eaten.
• First place bird birdseed with bale cloth in the prepared planting hole together with the cloth. Fill two-thirds of the hole with soil. Then open the cloth at the top and hit back slightly. In this way you prevent a later constriction of the plant.

You can create a hedge out of several bird-breeding trees. With the planting of different variants, you will have a wonderfully colorful screen in no more than two years - and in the autumn many pinnate visitors in the garden who want to quench their hunger. Also some tips:

• They want to plant in a row "> Common viburnum: The native shrub reaches a height of up to four meters and grows densely branched when fully grown.From June it blooms white, before it bears red fruit in the fall, the birds particularly appreciate Common viburnum also feels well in the shade and gets along well with a well drained, normal garden soil.

  

  Blackthorn: The bird plant is equipped with very pretty flowers. In the autumn it trains the well-known sloe fruits. Due to the dark thorns on its branches, blackthorn is also called blackthorn.

  Rock pear: The pome fruit plant can grow up to four meters high. When they shoot, the leaves of the rock pear are still coppery red, before they take on a green tone and shine yellow to orange red in the fall. The shrub fascinates the whole year through its changing color splendor.

  

  Cornelian cherry: The dogwood often blooms in March or April and therefore acts as a major bee-nut plant. Later, the little birds are happy about the dark red, floury-sweet fruits, of which you can of course also pick a few, to process them into liqueur or jam.

  Make birdseed yourself

  

  Now let's talk about the options to make birdseeds yourself. For this you need fruits, nuts and seeds in the first place. These can be bought commercially (for example as birdseed mixes), branch off from your own food, or collect on nature walks. With regard to the latter method, the following "ingredients" are suitable:

  Ingredients of trees	Ingredients of shrubs	Ingredients of grasses, cereals, flowers and perennials
  Seeds of pine cones Seeds of pine cones Seeds from alder cones birch seeds maple seeds Seeds from beechnuts apple seeds pear seeds plum seeds Kirschkerne Rowan berries walnuts	elderberries haws Fruits of snowball Fruits of privet Fruits of hawthorn Fruits of Pfaffenhütchen hazelnuts	millet thistles barnacles chickweed Evening primrose sorrel reporting heather knotweed plantain Shepherd's Purse Poppy dandelion Daisy Family

  In addition, it is advisable to pick up leftovers from bought fruit and vegetables for the preparation of the bird's food - such as melon or pumpkin seeds.

  Recipe 1: Make the dumplings yourself

  Dumplings bring all the nutrients a titmice needs to live.

  

  You need this:

  • 170 g fat (beef tallow from cattle or coconut fat)
  • 200 g of fruits and grains (raisins, poppy seeds, oatmeal and bran)
  • strong twine
  • soft net

  How to proceed:

  Step 1: Heat the fat in a saucepan.

  Step 2: Add about 180 grams of the feed mixture to the liquid fat and stir. Watch as the mass evolves. Once it has reached a good consistency in your opinion, go to step 3.

  Step 3: Set the pot to cool down next to the stove.

  4th step: When the fat is almost cold, you can start to shape individual balls out of the mass. Pull the twine through each ball.

  Step 5: Spread the remaining 20 grams of feed mixture on the shaped balls and squeeze them.

  Step 6: Tighten the net around the finished dumpling and seal the opening with the twine.

  Step 7: Hang the food in a suitable place in the garden. The titmouse will settle on the dumpling and enjoy the served meal in peace.

  Tip: Maybe you still have an old clay pot. Then you do not need to sculpt balls, but can let the entire fat mixture in the pot cool.

  Before adding the still liquid feed, insert a stable branch through the pot opening. After curing the food mix, hang up the whole construct called a bell feed. Incidentally, coconut or orange peel as a container are also conceivable as an alternative to the clay pot.

  Recipe 2: Bird Food Cookies

  Birdseed cookie looks pretty - and flatter the wild bird's palate.

  You need this:

  • 1 pack of coconut oil
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons cooking oil
  • Birdseed mixture (consisting of sunflower seeds, oatmeal, nuts, seeds, raisins etc.)
  • big cookie cutter
  • thin straws
  • line
  • baking sheet
  • baking paper

  How to proceed:

  Step 1: Let the fat melt in the saucepan - without boiling it up.

  Step 2: Add the birdseed.

  Tip: Do not use too much food, otherwise there is a risk that the trailers will later become brittle.

  Step 3: Remove the mixture from the stove for a short time.

  Step 4: Add one to two tablespoons of cooking oil and stir. So make sure the bird cookies stay supple.

  Step 5: Dress a baking tray with baking paper.

  Step 6: Lay out different cookie cutters and fill them with the birdseed mixture.

  Step 7: Cut one piece from a straw and put it into the place where you want to pull the string through.

  Step 8: Place the baking tray overnight in a cool place to allow the cookies to harden.

  Step 9: The next day, gently push the cookies out of the molds.

  Step 10: Remove the straw and pull the string through the holes.

  Step 11: Hang the bird food cookies in your garden or a nearby forest.

  Hints:

  In the end, you can determine the ingredients for the bird food yourself - with the theoretical part, you know which birds want which food. Our information in the recipes are only for orientation or inspiration.

  No matter which recipe you want to use: Avoid using salt - even salty nuts or salted tallow are taboo.

  Have fun creating delicious bird food and supporting your flying neighbors!