I took the dcs to a Springwatch Festival at the weekend. It poured with rain, the grass turned into a bog - i was wearing ballet pumps and seriously risked getting trench foot.
We learnt how to make a bird feeder from a plastic bottle and some twigs. They gave us twigs and seeds and said that finches would love it.
On Sunday we spent several hours making it when we got home. A 2 year old putting a bag of sunflower seeds in a small plastic bottle can take many hours. If you use a funnel, you find that the seeds are too big, and you then have to find a skewer to poke out the impacted seeds. Finding a skewer can take ages. You may also find that a skewer and a two year old can inflict damage on the toes of a five year old.
I had to do the dangerous bit of gouging the holes. I used scissors, but that didn't work, so used a corkscrew, and managed to make a big stigmata hole in the middle of my left hand.
Eventually, left hand bandaged, we finished and hung it up on a branch of a tree in good view of the window.
Not ONE bastard bird has been near it.
Not even a finch. There's a finchs nest in that tree. Finchs are supposed to love sunflower seeds. They haven't so much as perched on the bloodstained twigs sticking out of the bottom of the bottle. Dcs have been keeping an eye out, we've all been watching very closely.
I think that's rude of the birds.