How to Make Christmas Treat for Garden Birds

Festive STEM Activity for Kids

by eva.katona@yahoo.com Updated: November 4, 2025

Updated: November 4, 2025

Table of Contents

Feeding the garden birds is a good idea in winter (although, it is advised to feed them all year long and not just in the cold months. This is especially useful if your garden also is a breeding ground, so they don’t have to stray far away to find food. Which can help a better survival rate for the newly hatched chicks and populations can grow. Now, this is all important as our song bird population in the UK is declining. Much of this is linked to food, as land where the food is has been shrinking. Although some experts arguing that feeding birds can have a negative effect on least successful and less dominant species, overall, the positives of feeding the garden birds all year round outweigh the negatives. This Christmas Treat for Garden Birds activity is a fantastic STEM project for even the littlest!

Bird feeding throughout the seasons

Spring – it helps the birds feed to their chicks
Summer – the dry ground makes it harder to find food as well as more wildlife dangers present on the ground
Autumn – the birds are moulting and need to put on weight for winter
Winter – it helps the birds to survive the colder months and they can be ready for nesting in the springtime

What to feed the birds with?

Birds like a variety of foods, such as:

Seeds and grains
Fruit
Certain food scraps like cooked pasta, rice and boiled potatoes
Peanuts but they must be unsalted or fresh as well as chopped/smashed into smaller pieces, or in form of unsalted peanut butter
Raisins and sultanas
Net-free fat or suet balls
Insects

How to make the Christmas Treat for Garden Birds

Find some soft apples and halve them
Poke through somewhere in the middle of the apple – I used a chopstick for this
Drive through the thread, make a loop and tie it with a knot
Warm the peanut butter in the microwave, so it’s more spreadable (especially if it comes out of the fridge)
Spread the peanut butter over the apple halve (the inner side)
Dip the peanut butter side into bird food (seeds)
Hang them out on a tree branch
Watch it disappear in a few hours

This treat is great for a few reasons

Firstly, if you have apples that are not quite nice and sort of going off or too soft – this is a great way to se them up instead of binning them.
Peanuts are good for birds as I mentioned earlier: they have a good amount of protein and in the form of butter (make sure it’s not sweetened or salted and ideally also additives and palm oil free) it’s easier for the birds to digest, and no choking hazard.
It’s a fantastic STEM activity do with the kids, educational and fun!
Even the threads can be reused over and over again.