Bird Cake

Entice the local bird population to your back garden or windowsill with this yummy recipe. (It sounds pretty gross actually but birds seem to like it.)

Left: © Natural History Museum.

No, we're not talking about a delicious cake filled with feathers to serve up to your granny; this is a recipe for the birds in your life.

You will need:
Food scraps - bacon rind, bread crusts, nuts, seeds, anything you think a bird would enjoy eating. Some lard. An old flowerpot or large yoghurt pot. A stick. A piece of string.

First mix up all of your food scraps, breaking large bits up into small pieces. Ask an adult to help you melt the lard. (Don't try that bit without help.)

Fill your pot with the food scraps then pour the lard in on top. Make sure the lard has trickled down all the way through the mixture, covering all of the food.

Push your stick into the middle of the cake, leaving a few centimetres sticking out as a handle.

Now chill your cake in the fridge.

When it's set hard, take it out of the pot - you may have to break the pot for this - and hang the cake in your garden, tying the string around the stick.

If you don't have a garden, hang the cake up from a window frame.

Warning: Always hang bird cakes, don't leave them resting on a surface or your window sill as they could attract rats.

Once the local birds discover your cake, you should have lots of visitors to your garden, letting you become a junior ornithologist.

Check out the RSPB kids' pages to find out more about birds.