Making Winter Treats for the Birds

Just before Thanksgiving I found myself with extra pine cones and other materials leftover from the National Wildlife Federation workshop at the Savvy Kids Conference (thank you, Marya!), so about 40 of our Caraway students had a chance to make some special holiday treats for the birds.

They spread a peanut butter/cornmeal mixture onto pine cones and then covered the pine cones in birdseed.

Then we helped them wrap up their pine cones for home transport.

Each pine cone has a string on it for easy attachment to a tree branch.

Would you like to make your own bird treats at home? It’s easy and fun! Just make sure you don’t use scented pine cones — the cinnamon oil is toxic. Just stick with good ol’ natural plain ones.

Materials:

Pine Cones

1 cup Peanut Butter (chunky is great)

1 cup Lard or Suet (optional, but preferred)

2 1/2 cups coarse yellow cornmeal

1 box of raisins, cranberries, or other dried fruit bits

1 bag of Bird Seed

1 roll of ribbon

Tie a length of ribbon to the base of the pine cone for easy hanging on a tree branch. Mix the food ingredients in a bowl. Spread the mixture onto the pine cone, then roll it in the birdseed. You can press extra seeds onto the feeder to really pack them on. Then hang your feeder from the tree. It’s as easy as that!

These kinds of feeders are important for seed- and berry-eating birds in the winter. Because food is scarce in the winter, they need sources of fat, protein, and high-energy carbohydrates. Some birds you might see enjoying your pine cone feeders include chickadees, cardinals, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, titmice, and more.

Have fun with your treats and tweets!

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Cub Scouts Diversify Our Woodlands

A big thanks to Cub Scouts Den 2 of Pack 162, who planted seedlings in our woodlands before Thanksgiving. They learned about compost and good planting techniques and then headed out to the woods with plants and equipment. Some of the plants they added to our woodlands include Flame Acanthus, Turk’s Cap, Inland Sea Oats, and more!

The Cub Scouts also took the time to gather up any trash they found in the woods while they were working. Wow!

Thank you, Scouts and parents! We sure appreciate you helping our wildlife habitat grow.

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Preschool Garden Delights Our Youngsters

Our youngest students at Caraway now have their very own butterfly-hummingbird habitat, thanks to a very dedicated group of Girl Scouts working on their Bronze Award, as well as wonderful contributions from the community.

The lovely hardscaping was funded by part of our Home Depot Building Healthy Communities Grant, allowing us to create a very special outdoor learning area for our youngest students. In addition, the marvelous ThunderDirt was contributed by GeoGrowers, and the native plants were donated by the Wildflower Center. Thank you so much to these superb businesses and organizations — our children will grow in so many ways along with their new garden! We love how the grounds around Caraway are becoming more beautiful AND educational — and the wildlife will be grateful, too!

The Girl Scouts spent many hours planning and designing the project, measuring and calculating needed materials, digging through some very tough dirt, hauling heavy wheelbarrows around, laying pavers and blocks, shoveling soil and sand and granite, planting plants, and assembling benches. What a tremendous project they undertook, and the results are so impressive!

The curved garden has a diverse collection of touch-friendly native plants that will attract wildlife to the children’s garden.

And the butterfly benches are a favorite of so many of our Caraway students, families, and staff. They are resting on a new “patio” of pavers that was no easy task to place! In the spring, the Girl Scouts will be adding new planters and a hummingbird station to create a little haven alongside the benches.

We so much appreciate the hard work of this fantastic group of Scouts.

Our preschoolers excitedly watched the progress during the few weeks of the project, and now they are enjoying working in their very own garden, tending the new plants. A few even got to help with the creation of the garden by moving decomposed granite into the pathway, one trowel-ful at a time (with some bigger help from the Scouts and the Green Team).

Right now the plants are very small, which unfortunately makes them a little attractive to neighborhood deer looking for fall munchies — this is the time of year that deer sample plants that normally wouldn’t appeal to them. But don’t worry, the plants that survive will become a beautiful garden in the spring — and we’ll replace anything we need to at that time, when the deer are busy looking for tastier new growth elsewhere.

We love the new garden — thank you Girl Scouts, Home Depot, GeoGrowers, Wildflower Center, and all the volunteers who helped along the way!

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Have Tank… Need Rain!

Meet our new 5,000-gallon rain tank, installed and ready for rain! It arrived yesterday on a big crane truck, and its installation excited many an onlooker. A few parents did a double-take later in the day, as well — it’s definitely got a WOW factor.

Our rain tank is part of our habitat agreement with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and it will be used to provide water for our Outdoor Wildlife Lab, especially during the heat of the summer. The tank itself is a 5,000-gallon fiberglass reservoir installed by Tank Town. It stands with a 10-foot diameter and 8.6-foot height — and it’s considered small by the industry! The tank will collect water from our big metal roof.

To prep for the installation, we created a mortared retaining wall using leftover blocks from the creation of the O.W.L., and then leveled the ground. It might look simple, but believe me when I say it was tough and tiring. Thankfully the district helped us out with a Bobcat to scrape the dirt after the wall was built. Our Caraway soil is stubborn and very, very hard.

Once the tank arrived on Wednesday, however, the process seemed fast — the crane truck lifts up that tank like it’s a feather.

Each Caraway adult’s inner child cheered along with our eager, big-eyed students as we watched the crane lift the tank into the air and move it into position.

Once the tank was in place, the crew worked on the pipes, inlets, outlets, and drain spout.

And now we’re ready for rain! Well, that’s not entirely true — we still need to build our shed and work on drip lines. But the rain can come anytime. Anytime now… please….

FYI, we are very much in need of more Green Team members. Sometimes it’s only one or two of us working on these projects, so if you can help from time to time, please send me an e-mail at MMLN(at)austin.rr.com so I can add you to the Green Team list to let you know of volunteer opportunities. Thank you!

We will be organizing the painting of the tank of soon — some of our artistic Caraway students will be helping us create a fun habitat mural to decorate our great tank! If anyone knows of a paint store willing to help with paint donations, we’d be so grateful.

And by the way, if anyone thinks our new tank is really, really big, I should point that it can still play hide and seek behind an Oak Tree!

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Savvy Kids Conference — November 20!

Now’s the time to register for the Savvy Kids Conference on November 20, at Concordia University (off of 620). This Family EXPO and Kids Conference is great fun for elementary school kids. There are lots of different activities, entertainment, kid workshops, Expo booths, and food — your kids AND you will become super savvy! Check it out!

And adults are FREE at the Expo — you only need to register your kids!

By the way, yours truly will be one of the National Wildlife Federation presenters — learn more about wildlife habitats with me at our workshops!

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The Sequel Workday and New Garden

We had fewer volunteers for our Habitat Workday, the Sequel, but those who came really brought determination. Many more plants made it into the ground — at the front of the school, at the back of the school, and off in the woods. Plus, we found and removed more Ligustrums and Nandinas. Thank you to our dedicated Eagle Scout Ben K. and to Habitat Stewards Dale B. and Sue A. — you have made such a tremendous difference in our school grounds and our students’ nature opportunities. Thank you again to the Wildflower Center for your amazing support of our native plant endeavors. And of course, thank you to all of our volunteers for your muscle power!

Off in the woods we found exciting native discoveries, including Kidneywood, Agarita, Twisted Leaf Yucca, Yellow Passionflower, Elbow Bush, Virginia Creeper, and more. And we have increased our native plant diversity with Betony Mistflower, Rock Rose, Mexican Silk Tassel, Shrubby Boneset, Lyre-leaf Sage, and yet others. I’ll be adding descriptions and wildlife info of these plants to our blog as soon as I have a chance.

Our other exciting news is that several Girl Scouts in one of our 5th-grade troops have been working hard to plan and implement a new butterfly-hummingbird garden for the students in our preschool program. This project was made possible by a Home Depot grant for Building Healthy Communities. Thanks to the grant, we were able to purchase the pavers, benches, and other hardscape materials to allow us to have a new native garden for wildlife and our young students to enjoy. Thank you, Girl Scouts and Troop Leader Jen V.M., Home Depot, and all the volunteers who have made this new garden possible.

Thank you also to Geo Growers for your contribution of wonderful ThunderDirt, a perfect soil for native plants. Geo Growers soil is also in our Outdoor Wildlife Lab, and the native plants there are simply thriving.

The preschoolers’ garden is not quite finished, but is very close — the Girl Scouts should have plants in the new bed next week!

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