Making Suet Cakes for Birds

Even birds like food treats, especially in the winter. From Feeding Birds, here is an easy homemade suet cake that your birds might enjoy now:

Making homemade suet cakes is simply a matter of melting fat down to a pour-easy consistency, adding a few ingredients of your choosing, then pouring the mixture into a mold. The shape of the mold is determined by the type of suet feeder you'll use.

If you are using lard or shortening for homemade suet cakes, adding equal parts of peanut butter flour will help maintain correct consistency of regular suet cakes.

To this warm and pour-able mixture you could add rolled oats, bird seed, cornmeal, raisins, unsalted nuts and anything else you think the birds would enjoy. Then, pour your warm suet 'soup' into the mold (a bread pan where you could slice off bits for your store bought suet feeder, cupcake tins that you could pierce with wire and hang from a tree, etc).

This little guy was photographed Saturday by Jack Heniford in South Carolina:

Cardinals (redbirds) are attracted to sunflower seeds and safflower seeds, according to Plant Answers.

Let me know if you have success with feeding birds, and what type feeder you have.