Collecting Nesting Materials

I love going for walks in the summer to pick wildflowers. I love collecting colourful leaves in the fall. Winter… well, it’s over at least. But in early spring, it’s all mud and bare trees. Not much to collect on a nature walk. But then we saw a Grackle trying to pull the string from the tree that our piñata used to hang from. And we realized that it’s nesting season! We can collect nesting materials for birds! Okay, I have to admit that I was way more excited about it than the kids were. But it was pretty fun getting their help to collect materials.

Nesting Materials

After we had our idea, I consulted the internet. All sources on safe nesting material seem to agree that you should not leave out yarn or string or dyer lint or human hair. These are not safe, as birds can become tangled in the long strands. Well… that made me feel pretty guilty for snipping off the piñata string and letting the bird take it away. The materials birds really need are the ones they would find in the natural world:

• Dry grass clippings
• Soft pine needles
• Small sticks
• Moss: The cemetery is a great source of moss, especially around the older gravestones. It’s on the stones themselves and the grass around them.
• Fluff from cattails: If you live around Kincardine, the ditches at the side of highway 21 and a few concessions on the way to Ripley are great sources for cattails. At this time of year, the fluff comes off so easily. I can just imagine how comfy those baby birds would be with that padding their nest!

After our walk we left the nesting materials out on the ground and over branches in our front yard. We surrounded it with birdseed, then waited. From our window, I saw a Grackle land on the ground and pick up one of our long pieces of grass. Then it dropped the grass, hopped away, picked up a piece of garbage, and flew up into a tree… Well, we tried. But we can’t compete with that.

Pretend McDonalds

Ingredients:

• McDonald’s boxes (saved from previous meal there)
• Old McDonald’s Toys or other small toys, wrapped in tin foil (I have a ton of actual McDonald’s toys from my childhood)
• Paper sandwich bags
• Play food (available at our local dollar store)

There are two ways to play this game. You can put the play food inside the boxes with a toy and let the kids pretend that they are at McDonald’s. Or, you can make homemade chicken nuggets and fries and put them in the paper sandwich bags and serve them, with the ton the boxes, for dinner. Both are a lot of fun! My friends have enjoyed watching their kids opening their toys and seeing the ones they remember from their own childhood.

Balloon Type: These days there are specific water balloons you can buy at Canadian Tire or the Dollar Store, but for this, I actually prefer using real balloons. They are less likely to break when you don’t want them to.

Those Accordion Tubes

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Note: Make sure to break up the skewers before throwing them out, or you will end up with a hole in the bag and garbage water all over the bottom of your garbage bin.