Backyard Birding

I love feeding the birds in my front and back yards...I have a lot of windows, so I can see them from most rooms. My finch feeder/socks are full of Eastern Goldfinches...they eat tiny Niger seeds. I also put out cracked corn on the ground, as well as Black-oil sunflower seeds in feeders and some on the ground. A big hit for the Cardinals, Carolina Wrens,Titmice, and Blackcapped Chickadees is my bird cakes I make from scratch. I don't buy suet, it's too expensive and I like to use up what I have in the kitchen. Here's the recipe:

hamburger grease
cornmeal
a little flour
generic peanut butter, crunchy

I use 4 parts cornmeal to 1 part flour placed in a large bowl. I heat the peanut butter with the grease (the amounts don't matter-just use what you have) in the microwave to soften...watch it that it just BEGINS to soften! Then I stir it all together. I sometimes add some chopped raisins, any other chopped nuts; whatever I might have left over. Mold these in little cakes, according to the size you want=bigger in the winter, smaller in the summer, due to becoming rancid fast. Then, freeze them on a platter- when they are hard, put them in a Ziplock bag and keep them in the freezer, taking out what you need. Sounds simple, but my birds eat them up as fast as I can make them...