Weather this morning turned very windy, wet and dark enough to need the lights on all day ! so decided to make some pastry for the birds; plain flour, mix of lard and beef dripping, mild cheddar cheese, berry suet pellets, kibbled peanuts and filtered water !
The pink powder is what is left at the bottom of the storage box and the berry suet which has crumbled to powder dust - no good wasting so all goes into the pastry mix.
you can tell how dark a day it was, even with the lights on it was dark lol
18 rolls, 15 of them now in the freezer, other three chilling for a few hours or overnight in the fridge before it gets dished out to the birds.
So......... what u waiting for ? ............................ lol
Past customers ! ................................
doesn't get any better than this next one when the Long tailed tits land by your hand !!
Sound great, licking my lips down here. Is your recipe on a thread somewhere Hazel? Think I will have a go making some when home next week, once jet lag worn off.
Hi Tony, firstly, have a safe journey back to UK and hope you recover from the jet-lag quickly, your trip around NZ must have been amazing so thanks for sharing the blog on your thread.
Tony T said: Is your recipe on a thread somewhere Hazel?
Regarding pastry, as you would make for an apple pie minus the salt ........... I buy the supermarket own brand plain or wholemeal flour and use lard or beef dripping (half fat to flour ratio). Mix the flour and lard/dripping to crumbled texture to which you can add a small handful of mild cheddar cheese (supermarket brand again) also add small quantities of bird food like suet pellets, kibbled peanuts, sunflower hearts or mixed seed and bind together ingredients with just enough water to bring the pastry together but ensuring the mixture is not sticky; there are no hard and fast rules about what you add as long as its suitable and safe for birds - even just plain flour and lard would be ok but I add other things like kibbled nuts for protein. The cheese does have a salt content but a small handful in a big batch of pastry is ok. You could even grate an apple into the mix. Once you have your mix you just shape it into rolls or flat squares to put in the fat feeder cages. Ensure you rest the pastry in the fridge for a few hours or preferably overnight to give the mix time to rest because of the gluten content. You can freeze the pastry no problem and it should last in the fridge for at least three days or more; I tend to keep a roll out and put others in freezer bringing them out the night before I need to use them. You can place little bits of the pastry on the twigs - unless you have raiders like starlings or squirrels, etc., and the rest you can put into the normal fat type feeders.
Good luck, the birds will thank you for it as the weather gets colder. I just put some out this morning and a female G.S.Woodpecker was one of the first birds to take her share ! One of my better batches back in 2013 lol
Unknown said:Hi Warren, that photo was taken a few years ago and on a bitterly cold winter's day; the LTTs are pretty confiding little birds on the whole and you will find they will come closer particularly during colder weather when food takes precedence over fear of humans ! If you follow a regular feeding routine and they are daily visitors to your garden they will start to associate you going out with the pastry and be waiting in the trees like they were with me ! Good luck - weather's getting colder now so start making the pastry !!
That's brilliant news Warren, once the birds associate there is food like pastry available they will call back as these temperatures drop and the birds need to refuel more often. The lollipops don't hang around long although I have known them to stay much longer if the weather is icy and they don't want to waste energy keep popping back for top-ups. You may find if they are in the tree tops and you go out to place some pastry on the twigs, they might come down whilst you are still there - they don't seem that afraid of humans on the whole so fingers crossed ! It's just a matter of association with food, routine and getting used to you in the garden. I've had wrens on my lap before now ! (during the breeding season when they came to the mealworm bowl for worms to take back to their offspring). They can become incredibly confiding if you use patience and feeding routine. Good luck and enjoy watching those beautiful garden birds :)
Thanks Hazel, will try this to get the birds back into the garden, we've been away so long the feed I left for our neighbors to fill the feeders will have run out weeks ago.
I'd completely forgotten about this thread so have resurrected it with our hungry bunch of corvids ! I hadn't made any pastry since winter months but as the corvids are in large numbers and feeding chicks I thought I'd make some raw pastry with sunflower hearts, kibbled peanuts, oats, berry suet, mealworm suet, grated mild cheddar and chucked a large wodge of it out .............. wasn't long before Earl the Crow bit off almost more than he could chew whilst the rest of the smaller corvids looked on until he had finished exporting a huge batch !! 3 kilos is not enough lol They do get tinned dog food, chicken scraps, etc.. hoping they predate a few less chicks.
record shot only through window ............... but it give you an idea of how popular Hazy's special pastry is !!
Great pic Alan, certainly very original and a new pastry eater !
I can only offer up the usual suspects ………….....