Blossoms for Birds Tutorial

This week's How-To is Blossoms for Birds Tutorial by Donni, from Fairyfolk from the Natural Kids Team. Where I live the birds are just coming back, the flowers beginning to pop their heads out of the ground, so I can sure use this great post now! Hope you enjoy this installment of the Spring & Easter Themed tutorials.

Blossoms for Birds:

Here in Southern California, Spring has definitely arrived! Our nights are cool, our mornings are crisp and our days are warm and sunny... it's lovely weather, my favorite time of the year. The squirrels come out, the jasmine blooms and the birds start collecting treasures to build their nests with.

We have a spring tradition that we call 'Blossoms for Birds'. Each year as Spring approaches and we start to notice the birds building their nests, we decorate a bare tree branch with lovely soft wool for them. We find a branch.

Saw it to the right length for little people to reach even the top branches.
And then we put the bare branch in a spot in the garden, just beyond our deck, where we can watch it from our dining room. It's best to put the branch in a visible place, somewhere where you can watch it, undetected by the outside creatures.
Collect a basket of spring-colored wool scraps. I let K choose any color she wanted from my precious stash.
Decorate the bare tree with the wool, winding it around the branches and twigs.
Timone, our squirrel, came to see what we were doing.
She caused great distress by climbing down our Blossoms for Birds tree, nearly knocking it over and making K very angry... "This is for the BIRDS, Timone!" K scolded.
We were able to placate her with a few nuts while we finished decorating our wool tree.
It looks so pretty, covered in colorful tufts of wool, however, a pretty tree is not why we made our Blossoms for Birds Tree... it's for the birds to build their nests with!
All Spring long, we'll watch from our dining room table as the neighborhood birds are attracted to the colorful wool. They'll twitter about in a frenzy of excitement at the lovely soft wool they've found. They'll take a colorful bundle in their beak and fly off with it to build their nests. Just imagine what their nests will look like... pink, blue yellow... so pretty and soft for the sweet little baby birds.
I know that not many of you will have colorful wool roving scraps lying around, so I have listed for purchase a few packets of colorful wool bits in my shop. Enjoy!

Blessings and magic! Donni

This tutorial is brought to you by Natalie, of Woolhalla

Please visit Donni at her blog The Magic Onions where you can see the original post, plus other great tutorials and share the "magical journey of childhood with us"

Check out her Etsy shop Fairyfolk where you beautiful needle felted items, including some super sweet bunnies and chicks.