Beautiful and All Natural Birdseed Wreaths.

Easy to make birdseed wreaths with all natural ingredients that birds love.

As soon as November hits, I get into wreath making mode… evergreen wreaths for the door and the shop, yummy seedy ones for the birds. These lovely birdseed wreaths are easy to make, great for gift giving, and oh so festive for the holidays.

When I first started making wreaths for the birds, I trialed three recipes to see which ones the birds would like the very best. Two of the wreaths were made with suet and other natural ingredients, and one was that yucky one that keeps making it’s rounds on the internet, the one made with flour, gelatin, and corn syrup.

To be fair, they all attracted birds, even that one that I do not like, but as I cannot in good conscience feed my birds corn syrup and white flour, I stick to the two suet wreaths. For all three recipes, see HERE! You decide which one you want to make : )

I have now been making these wreaths 10 years (boy, has that ever gone fast!). I've made all sizes, tried different things, and learned a few things along the way, too.

This is the recipe for the wreath that I make most often, the one I mostly sell at the greenhouse. It has only four ingredients… suet, peanut butter, cornmeal, and a really good quality of wild birdseed, suitable for the birds in my area.

What you need to know about these ingredients…

Suet - If you buy the small bags of suet from the frozen meats section of the grocery store, you will get about 3 cups of nice, white, clean suet, with no bits of meat in it. It is ground up, so melts quickly and is super easy to use. This pre-rendered suet is dehydrated, so use a bit more than the recipe calls for to make a nice, fatty wreath that the birds love. The birds love suet!

If you cannot find any (there has been a shortage the past two winters) get your suet straight from the butcher, ask him to grind it for you first to make easier to work with. To use this suet, you will need to render it before making it into a wreath, meaning that you melt it down slowly and then strain it to remove all the bits of meat from it.

If you get your suet in a big chunk, chop it up nice and fine before you render it, so it melts faster, and you get more of the fat out of it. You want to melt it on a really low heat, for a really long time, to keep it from scorching. The slower you go, the clearer the fat will be. This is less important for the birds than it is if you are using it to make your Christmas pudding ; )

If this really grosses you out (as a vegetarian, I hear ya), pick up some lard instead : )

Peanut Butter - You can use chunky or smooth, both work just fine. Make sure that you use a peanut butter that does not have xylitol (also sometimes called Birch Sugar) in it, as it is not good for birds and is deadly for your pups. Dogs love birdseed wreaths as much as the birds do, all that lard and peanut butter ; )

Cornmeal - If you have no cornmeal, or prefer not to use it, replace it with small flake oats, or steel cut oats.

Birdseed - I use a birdseed that consists mostly of black oil sunflower seeds, which is loved by birds everywhere. I recommend going to a bird store to find the blends most liked by the birds in your area.

The best seeds, the ones most liked by the birds, are sunflower, nyjer, safflower, peanuts, and then white millet. If you use the seed blends that are low in sunflowers, but high in white millet and corn, it might appeal to rodents more than birds. Eek! Also, millet is tossed to the ground for the ground pecking birds to eat, so you may end up with weeds sprouting in spring.

The Recipe...

• 1 cup of suet (1.5 cups if using the bagged suet)

• 1 cup of peanut butter

• 1 cup of cornmeal

• 4 cups of high-quality birdseed

Melt your suet in a large pot at a low heat.

Add the peanut butter, stir till it is all melted.

Add the seeds and cornmeal, stir till well coated so that it sets well.

Put the mix into a bundt pan to make it look fancy. Let harden in pan overnight, can also be placed into the fridge or freezer to set up faster.

Extra information to keep your wreath from breaking in half...

When I was making these wreaths, I discovered that sometimes, after much love and attention from the birds, they would crack in two at the weak point. The birds like to start pecking at the top, by the ribbon, and then work their way down. As the side narrowed and weakened, it eventually broke and fell to the ground.

When a wreath falls at my house, the evidence is quickly gobbled up by my two garden helpers, they love anything with peanut butter... and then, bespeckled remains would grace the yard... I had to come up with an organic strategy to ensure the wreaths stayed together for the birds to enjoy, not my pups. After some googling, I found an idea to use a wire bent into a wreath shape. I knew I did not want to go that route, not practical for me to be bending many rings of wire. I then came upon one that was using bits of twigs tied together with florist's wire … decided to use that idea but modified to use no wires.

I gathered some grapevines from the garden and twisted them together, making these wee little grapevine rings. No need for wire or string, just use pliable branches that you can twist together. They do not have to be grapevines, just any branches that are thin and bendable. I have used branches from all sorts of shrubs over the years.

Make a ring to the size you want, hold it together with your hand while you weave the ends in through the center of the ring, go round and round as many times as you can so that it stays together.

Put some birdseed mix in the bottom of the pan, add one or two of these rings into the cake pan, stuff the warm seed mixture all around them, top up with the rest of the mix… voila! Works like a hot dang. The rings are then totally biodegradable, no wires used at all.

After the wreath has set up, hang it from a branch, a shepherd's hook, or on a fence. Mine are hung up against a really, really big cedar tree. Here you can see a bit of the bent grapevines showing, but it does not detract from the wreath at all... looks very natural : )

You can also use a mini bundt pan to make wee little wreaths that are so super cute! The recipe makes 6 small ones or one medium sized wreath.

To make them extra special, you can add a ‘special frosting’ of suet and peanuts.

Put the roasted unsalted peanuts at the bottom of the pan, add suet to hold them together and create the look of white frosting, fill the pan as usual.

Birds love this extra touch.

Make whatever size you like, add a bit more or less of any ingredients that you like.

You can add extra suet to the bottom for a special treat even if you do not have, or prefer not to use, peanuts.

Suet and seed frosting on this one.

Roasted unsalted peanuts on this one, with just enough suet to hold them in place.

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I do.

Love feeding the birds for the holiday, and in the new year, too.

Happy Holidays ~ Tanja