Pine cone bird cafe

What you need

• A pine cone
• Solid fat such as lard or suet
• Bird seed or porridge oats
• String

How to do it

1. 1

   Tie a long loop of string round the top of the cone.

2. 2

   Press soft fat into all the gaps with your fingers.

3. 3

   Roll it in seed on a plate until well covered.

4. 4

   Hang it where you can see it from a window, out of reach of cats.

5. 5

   Watch for ten minutes a day and tally which birds come. Look up any you do not know in a book.

Try this next

• Salt dough fossils

  Press shells, leaves and toy dinosaurs into salt dough to make fossils that dry hard by morning.

• Build a bug hotel

  Stack sticks, bark and old plant pots into a cosy hotel and see who checks in over the week.

• Symmetry leaf hunt

  Collect leaves, fold them down the middle and sort them into the almost symmetrical and the wonderfully wonky.