Winter has officially started and while we might look forward to crisp frosty mornings and snow, birds will find it increasingly harder to find food.

As not all birds head south when it gets cold, we can help keep our local small birds well-fed during the winter with a little bit of easy DIY.

What you'll need (per feed ball):

150g tallow / clarified butter / coconut oil
150g seed mix*
2 Tbsp cooking oil
small stick
piece of string

*Different birds prefer different food. They will only pick out what they like, but you can decide whether to mix all seeds or have separate feed balls for different bird species. You can use whatever you have in your pantry or what you have access to (like acorns).

Finches, sparrows, and siskins are grain eaters and prefer things like sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, chopped nuts (especially hazelnuts and peanuts), beechnuts, acorns, and millet seeds.

Robins, dunnocks, wrens, blackbirds and starlings prefer soft food like oats, wheat bran, apple pieces, raisins, meal worms, and shelled sunflower seeds.

Tits, woodpeckers, nuthatches and many others eat everything, so they're fine with a mix of all the ingredients above.

How to make the feed balls:

Melt the fat, do not boil it! Tallow works best, but clarified butter or coconut oil are alternatives. The fat has to stay solid at 10°C and many birds actually prefer animal fats. Too soft and the oil can get stuck and damage the birds' feathers.

Mix the cooking oil in the fat and add your seed mix.

Tie a piece of sturdy string together and form a ball of seed around half the string (so you can still hang it up later). Let it harden completely.

You can also fill the seed mix into old cups and add a little stick / twig before the mix hardens. Then simply hang up the cup with some string. You can also trap a seed ball in repurposed fruit nets (the ones you buy oranges and lemons in). Alternatively, you can cover pine cones in the seed mix.

After that it's up to you whether you hang them up outside your window, on your balcony or in your garden, or if you distribute the feed balls in trees around town. One thing is guaranteed, though: the local birds will appreciate the effort.