The DIY Bird Feeder Idea That Martha Stewart Is Obsessed With

Like many wild animals, birds spend a huge chunk of time trying to meet their nutritional needs. To them, finding a reliable source of their preferred seeds or berries is like winning the lottery. Placing a feeder on your property can help your feathered friends feel a bit more secure and perhaps even lucky. It's also a simple way to attract more songbirds to your yard, where they'll provide hours of screen-free entertainment, educational opportunities, and sweet serenades. Suet cakes can lure birds year-round (as long as it's cold out), and they're easy to make at home. Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart likes to DIY this style of feed with a Bundt pan and several bird-enticing ingredients. The finished product looks like a fancy little cake. With a bit of ribbon for decoration, it could be a nice gift for another bird lover in your life.

Any size of Bundt (or similar) cake pan will work for this project as long as it can be filled to the brim with ingredients. Stewart creates bird Bundts with a general-purpose birdseed mix that's rich in sunflower seeds. She blends this with peanuts, dried cranberries, and suet she has rendered herself. Stewart recommends using six parts seed to roughly two parts liquid suet, as well as one part peanuts and one part dried fruit. She also incorporates fresh cranberries for aesthetic appeal, pressing them into the top of each ring-shaped suet cake. If you decide to make this type of feeder, use unsalted peanuts since sodium can severely harm birds. Also choose peanuts that are raw rather than roasted, and dried cranberries without added oils or sweeteners.

Your bird Bundt is most likely to withstand outdoor conditions if you choose the right kind of binder and chill the whole thing before hanging it in your yard. Martha Stewart's binder, suet, is made from beef fat. You can trim fat from pieces of meat you're already using and save them in the freezer until you have a few cups' worth. When you're ready to render the fat, dice it, melt it in a saucepan on medium heat, strain it through cheesecloth, and let it solidify. Then, melt and strain it again. This process helps give it the consistency you need for your feeder. If you don't want to save fat scraps, use lard instead, and if you'd prefer to avoid animal products, use salt-free natural peanut butter as a binder. There are lots of other swaps you can make as well. If you don't have dried cranberries, raisins will do. No peanuts in your pantry? Substitute rolled oats or chopped pecans. You could even try adding chia seeds to your feeder to give birds a nutrition boost.

After you've combined your seeds, nuts, fruits, and binder and pressed the resulting melange into Bundt pans, refrigerate or freeze the feeders you've created. They need to be solid before going outside. Also introduce these feeders on a cool day since warm weather above 70 degrees Fahrenheit can make suet fall apart or go rancid. Completely rendered (cooked) fat, used in commercial, ready-made cakes, should stay safe and stable to about 100 degrees F. There are also "no melt" cakes sold that will stay safe to 130 degrees F. If you live in bear country, wait till mid-December when bears are usually laying down for the winter.