My wreath included orange slices, purple lavender and blue rosemary blooms and tiny, snipped pieces of pine cone. Spruce tips and fresh rosemary sprigs provided the flourish of green. For a festive touch of red, I added red blueberry leaves, frozen cranberries and bright red crabapples from my yard.
Laura Dean Bennett
Staff Writer
One of the easiest craft projects for you and your family to enjoy is also one of the most fun ways to up your bird-watching game this winter.
Give your feathered friends and your family the gift of an ice wreath.
These pretty frozen wreaths will make welcome feasts for the birds when the snow flies and, at the same time, bring a cheerful bit of bright color to the winter landscape.
And by making a few of them ahead of time and saving them in the freezer, you’ll be ensuring future treats for your feathered friends and several occasions of fun bird watching for your family.
And it’s so easy.
Just gather berries, fruit and flowers and place them in a bundt pan, add water, freeze and, voila, you have an ice wreath.
If you still have crabapples on your trees, pansies or other edible blooms on the porch, lambs ear in the field, or berries among your landscaping, gather them up – they make excellent additions.
If it’s too late in the season for gathering edibles outdoors, use cranberries and slices or pieces of citrus fruits and apples.
For a pop of color, pick a few green leaves still hanging on the shrubs in your yard, and snip off a few holly leaves or small tips of evergreens.
It might seem like adding bird seed would be a good idea, but it’s really not.
The seeds are difficult for birds to crack out of the ice and as the ice melts, they may get moldy. Better to use your birdseed for keeping your bird feeders filled.
Remember not to use anything unnatural in the ice wreath. Avoid anything unhealthy for birds or animals to eat (certainly add nothing containing artificial sugar or dye).
When it melts, whatever is not eaten will fall to the ground.
Natural ingredients, even if not eaten, will decompose naturally and not pose any danger to wildlife or make another job for you by needing to be collected.
A walk through the yard, a visit to my herb garden and a quick look in the fridge provided all I needed to include in my wreath.
Luckily there were still pretty red blueberry leaves and the blooming tips of my lavender and rosemary available.
The birds’ vitamin C would be provided by the oranges in my fridge.
The remaining crabapples from my yard and lots of frozen cranberries from a bag in the freezer added more food value as well as a bit of bright red color.
For a decorative touch, small tips from the branch of one of my spruce trees and sprigs of rosemary gave the collection just the right touch of green.
I’m not sure if the birds will appreciate a few bites of rosemary as food, but humans sometimes enjoy it, so, you never know.
I didn’t add any nuts, but if you’d like to invite a few squirrels to join the party, you could include some to the mix.
You could even include a little suet to add a bit of protein.
Many winter birds, including, among others chickadees, juncos, cardinals, jays, titmouses, wrens and, of course, woodpeckers will welcome suet.
Make little suet balls by rolling tiny chunks of suet with oats or cornmeal and add them to the pan.
The crabapples and berries won’t last much longer on the trees and shrubs in my yard, so, what I didn’t use in making this first wreath, I saved in the freezer for making more ice wreaths later this winter.
Now, how to make the wreath:
Layer everything in a bundt pan and cover it all with a few cups of water.
If you don’t have a bundt pan, you can use a round cake pan. It will make a smaller wreath, but that’s okay. You can make a hole for a piece of twine, cord or ribbon later.
Even easier, weigh down a small circular bowl in the center of the cake pan to create a two or three inch round hole in the middle.
To complete the wreath-making process, just place the pan in the freezer – or you could sit it outside if it’s cold enough.
Let it set overnight to get frozen solid.
To remove the wreath from the pan, sit the pan in a sink full of warm water. Wait until the ice is thoroughly loosened from the edges of the pan.
Then gently tip the wreath out of the pan onto a soft towel so you don’t crack it.
If, instead of a bundt pan, you used a regular cake pan, it’s not difficult to make a hole in the center.
Heat a cylindrical, metal poker-like object (the cylindrical knife sharpener in my knife block would do well). After the ice is removed from the pan, gently and carefully press the heated object through the center of the ice to make a hole.
Your twine, cord or ribbon will need to be at least a foot and a half long, possibly longer, depending on what you use and where the wreath will be hung.
If you want to make your wreath especially festive, and maybe hang it as a holiday gift for your birds, you could use a wide red ribbon.
Just be sure to make it long enough to be able to tie a pretty bow.
And remember, if you use a ribbon or anything not biodegradable, bring it back inside as soon as the wreath melts, before the birds are tempted to pick at it. (The threads of a ribbon could pose a hazard to them.)
To hang the wreath, find a sturdy tree branch, preferably close enough to a window for convenient indoor viewing, and tie it onto the branch.
If you don’t have any trees close enough to the house, but you have hooks on your porch where bird feeders usually hang, you might use one of those.
You’ll get so much pleasure from your ice wreath. When the light shines through the ice, it will sparkle and glow.
And, when they discover it, the birds will be sure to appreciate your gift.
Pour a cup of hot tea and settle in for some delightful bird-watching.
As long as the weather cooperates, and depending on how many birds you’re feeding, your ice wreath should last at least a few days to a week outside.
What a beautiful way of saying Merry Christmas or Happy New Year to your winter birds.
