How to Make a Pine Cone Bird Feeder

As a home schooling mom, I wanted a project that would encourage animals to come near our home, so that the children could observe them. We made these neat birdseed covered pine cones to encourage local birds to come and feed near our windows.

To make these bird feeders, we started by taking a nature walk in the woods near our home to collect pine cones that had fallen on the ground. We collected half a dozen of them in various sizes to hang near different windows of our home.

Once we got them home, we inspected them all carefully to make sure that we hadn't accidentally carried any ants or other creepy crawlies into the house with us. If you are doing this project with your children, make sure an adult does that checking. Occasionally, stinging or biting insects will be hiding inside the grooves of your pine cone. So you want to make sure that there is nothing to hurt the children, before you hand them their pine cones to finish this project.

Spread newspapers, old newspapers, or drop cloths for a partial workspace because the next part gets a little messy. Give the children plastic knives and a tub of peanut butter, and encourage them to spread the peanut butter inside all the open 'fingers' of your pine cones. Younger children that don't handle knives well yet may do just as well spreading the peanut butter around with their hands. You'll probably want to dedicate a can of peanut butter to this project, so that you don't have to worry about contaminating the peanut butter inside the jar that you're planning to eat later.

Once the pine cones are thoroughly spread with peanut butter, fill up a low pan, (like a casserole pan) with birdseed. Roll your pine cones dipped in peanut butter into your pan of birdseed and take handfuls of birdseed and pour them into the middle parts of the pine cone's fingers so that all the peanut butter that you have put on gets a coating of birdseed stuck to it.

Lightly tap off any excess birdseed, and then tie a length of string or yarn to the top end of each pine cone. This is how you will hang your bird feeders up.

For the next part, you will probably need an adult's help unless your children are quite a bit older. You will need to hang your bird feeders outside the windows so that you will be able to see them when the birds come to feed on them. You may need a ladder to reach a tree branch or the eves of your home to tie your pine cones up.

Once your pine cones are in position, go back inside and watch through your windows. With in a day or so birds will discover the feeder, and come there to eat each day. If they eat off all the bird seed, you may need to go out and add more occasionally to keep them coming back.

Because we hung these feeders outside, a whole group of birds has now made it a habit to come and visit by our windows everyday. Not only was the project fun, but now we have an added bonus of being able to watch and study all the birds that come to feed from our pine cone bird feeders.

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