Feeding Backyard Birds

This week I made suet, I did not follow a recipe I just used the ingredients that I thought would work and mixed it all together. I used peanut butter, corn syrup, and grape jelly to hold the mixture together. The oatmeal and cornmeal was used to make the suet firm and easier to form into the preferred shape. All the other stuff raisins, bird seed, and pumpkin seeds were just thrown in to make the suet more exciting. I then formed the suet into balls and rolled it in more bird seed, next I put it in the freezer to help it hold together. Once the suet was hard I put it outside. I'm not sure if the birds ever ate any I think the squirrels took it all but that's alright.
We put safflower out in some of our feeders and a millet, sunflower, safflower mix in our ground feeder. We attracted blue jays, juncos, sparrows, chickadees, cardinals, and house finches. Of course the squirrels also came and had their fair share of the food too.

The egg drop

Today as our science lesson we constructed a package for a raw egg to see how much pressure it could take. We did this by dropping the boxes from different heights. The first step was to make "nesting materials" the items that are used to cushion the fall. I lined my box with two layers of felt, and the bottom was lined with more fabric squares and the egg was wrapped with fabric strips. Elliot lined the box with news paper wrapped the egg in a fabric piece and then used more news paper. His was called the egg express.

So now we were ready for the first drop. This drop number one was going to be held in the kitchen standing on the dinning room table, the measurement is 6 feet 3 inches.



Results: Elliot's egg held up and mine was cracked badly.
Drop number two is going to be held on the roof.
This drop measures 9 feet.





Results: Drop number 2, Elliot's egg broke and mine broke also.
Drop number 3 will be held in mom and dad's room we will drop the boxes from the window. This drop is 12 feet 2 inches.



Results: Elliot's made it and mine broke.

Now we know that the egg is not created to handle sudden pressure. Elliot's nesting materials had better results than mine.

Fall Leaf Raking

Today we raked our leafs up in the yard that had fallen from the red maple. The leafs were all truly lovely, and made a nice pile for jumping. The wind did not help when we were trying to bag the leafs, the weather was cold too, 31 degrees. So we made quick work of the small pile!

Biking at Squaw Creek

While we were camping at big lake we went to squaw creek national wildlife refuge to see the migrating birds. We biked the whole refuge, 10 miles on a gravel road, the gravel was really loose (not preferred for biking). We saw two bald eagles, and a lot of migrating birds. The trees made an arch way to ride through towards the end it was very beautiful. Thanks Grandpa for encouraging us to keep on!

Halloween at Big Lake

This week we celebrated my Grandma's Birthday camping at Big Lake state park, Her birthday is on the 31st so she had a Halloween party. Elliot dressed up in his navy flight suit. I was Sarah Palin and Rachael was Piper Sarah Palin's Daughter. We went bobbing for apples, carved pumpkins, and roasted hot dogs.