These silicone moulds are pretty good for making your own bird cake.
Melt fat and pour over a mixture of the things your local birds like eating. Mine have sunflower seeds and hearts, niger seed for the goldfinches, chopped peanuts, and an assortment of seeds and bits and pieces. Fill your silicon mould up. Leave in a cold place. Outside the back door in our case. They froze so fast they have got this cute snowflake edge! 
Pop the cakes out and serve on your raised veg bed, or punch a hole through and string them up somewhere and keep putting out water, the birds will really appreciate it.
The dog food company where we order the dried dog food decided to send Zeb a free advent calendar. This is a new one on me! He of course, thinks it is a great idea! What will the pet food industry think of next?
On the first day of Christmas there was tripe for me!
Zeb Bakes 
Oh that is perfect, now I understand your comment, and that’s exactly the sort of advent calendar we used to buy for the boys! You are so lovely to look after the birds, I think they must have your backyard marked in their internal GPSs as some sort of rest stop in winter!
ah, both Zeb and my boys both love advent calendars then. Lucky dog!
great idea- does fat=lard?
I either use suet or lard OR peanut butter. Have you seen the pine cones stuffed with peanut butter and then rolled in birdseed? Very decorative.
I’m so pleased puppy enjoyed his gift – and he knew just what to do – smart puppy!
Celia, Z and I slid over to the garden centre today to get more bird seed supplies, all the little plants were covered in ice and snow, but there was a roaring trade in bird food going on inside. It’s a national hobby here, throwing bread to ducks and putting out food for the garden birds.
I once had a calendar like that, with a charm in each day and a little chain to put them on – I used to love those calendars just like your boys do Brydie!
These ones were lard Heidi, I didn’t have any suet – we’ll see how they go down. Love the idea of pine cones with peanut butter and rolled in seed though, I don’t think I’ve seen those!
Debra, that dog is too smart – he has some puzzle toys with little drawers and flip lids, it took him about 30 seconds to figure them out… :)
One year recently when I got tired of paying so much for sunflower and thistle seed, I thought I’d begin giving the birds some wheat kernels – I figured if we liked them, the birds would too – surprisingly, they didn’t much care for them, especially if we continued to offer other choices as well – I felt rather insulted.
Intriguing! I thought pigeons and crows and so on ate wheat, but maybe it is corn they prefer?
We have mostly little birds right now, the large thrushes that come from Scandinavia sometimes, the fieldfares and redwings have either gone further south already or aren’t here yet. We saw one redwing a couple of weeks ago in the garden. Our resident birds are the ones that come regularly, the dunnock, robin, starling, blue, great, coal and long-tail tits, green and gold finches, lots of chaffinch this year, blackbirds always, wood pigeons, jackdaws and crows, occasionally a jay and a magpie; the sparrowhawk once or twice a day, there is a pair of wrens and yesterday I saw a buzzard circling overhead. We have peregrines in the Avon Gorge, less than a mile away and they cross town hunting sometimes too. I think that’s about it for the garden at the moment.
I love this post, especially as the blogs I look at seem at the moment to have snow falling – your garden photo looks fabulous with lazily falling snow flakes – courtesy of the internet. What fun for Zeb and what a smart Zeb he is. I’m so glad you’re feeding the birds – they must be as surprised at the turn in the weather as everyone else. Here in Brisbane we have had the wettest spring on record and so far it is continuing and cooler than normal too. I love it.
Just had a wild dash across the Downs, throwing squeaky balls, bouncing alarmingly on the frozen turf, ice fog, -4 today, no sunshine at all. I worry that the dogs will get frostbitten pads but so far it hasn’t happened! Brian’s been taking pics of the birds on the feeders and so on, if any are any good I’ll add them on. I saw there was rain in Adelaide, cricket on the news and so on :)
Wow, what a cute idea! And what beautiful birds you have a-cheep-cheeping in your back yard :)
Hi there Sasha, thanks for visiting.! What a great blog you have, I’m going to have a proper read tomorrow when I have a bit of time – I guess you have seen the reviews of this book by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac
‘Dictionnaire universel du pain’ referred to in this radio broadcast . It needs an English publisher and translator….