It's been snowing here, on and off over the last two days. Well, sleeting. Heavy rain, with lumps in. Mindful of the poor starving birds in the garden, I thought I'd crumble up the last remaining bit of the loaf I made on Sunday. It was a wholemeal granary one, with loads of seeds in it, so I thought it might do the birds some good.
We feed them with "real" birdfood too. Mr WithaY has a whole system of nut feeders, seed feeders, fat ball* feeders and a birdbath, which he keeps a close eye on, replenishing as required. We get all manner of small birds in the garden: finches, tits, song thrushes, blackbirds, robins, and sometimes a spotted woodpecker, which is lovely to watch. Oh, and a pair of ducks the other day which seemed to be looking for a nice spot to build a nest.
However, yesterday I thought that the birds could have some tasty homemade bread as well as the regular free-for-all buffet we normally provide for them.
I carefully crumbled up the bread, which was still fresh - before I get hate mail accusing me of palming off rock-hard crusts onto the poor defenceless birdies. None of that nasty stale shite for our birds. Oh no.
I made a neat little heap of crumbs, lots of nice sunflower seeds distributed throughout, scooped them up into my hand and opened the back door to toss them artfully onto the lawn where I'd be able to watch the birds enjoying them.
In future, I will check which way the wind is blowing before I toss a large handful of small breadcrumbs out of the door. Top tip there.
I spent about 20 minutes picking seeds off my clothes and out of my hair, and the birds got bugger-all**.
* I know it's juvenile, but I can't help it. I snigger every time I see the display of Fat Balls in the supermarket. And when we spotted the Fat Peckers I had to be helped away.
**Unless they were watching, and enjoyed a good laugh watching me shouting "Oh bollocks!" and brushing myself off vigorously.
4 comments:
You have to watch out for the rats, though. As Rentokil will tell you, if you feed birds, you'll get rats. Anyway, I was only saying to TLH yesterday that we really must have a go at making bread 'with bits in', i.e., seeds, etc, but I couldn't find a decent recipe - and here you are!!! What seeds do you put in? And do you have to change baking times or anything?
What you should have done was step into the garden and let the birds collect the crumbs and seeds directly off you. Just like Disney's Cinderella where all the little animals help clean the house for her....everyone's a winner.
Mrs Jones, we do have rats in the garden. Bloody things.
I'm sorry to have to confess to using packet mixes from the supermarket in the bread machine, they always work and are really easy.
Spencer, I could also have been like Snow White in the Shrek film.
Ah, we considered getting a breadmaker but thought we'd have a go at doing hardcore breadmaking by hand, which is surprisingly easy. We've not bought a loaf of bread for about 6 weeks now. I do the white, himself does the brown but I want to expand our repertoire now to include bits. I've noticed you can use those mixes for both breadmakers and by hand, so I may just have a go to see how they turn out.
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