Christmas Treat Trees

By Susan M. Thigpen © 1983-2012

Issue: December, 1983

Ivalien Belcher has a wonderful Christmas tradition that a lot of you might consider adding to your own. Every year she decorates an outside tree with edible decorations for the birds, squirrels, rabbits and other animals.

Some of the things you could decorate the tree with are strings of popcorn, a cereal like Cheerios strung, pine cones stuffed with peanut butter and sunflower seeds stuck in the peanut butter or strings of cranberries. You could use your imagination and come up with a lot of other possibilities too. Any sort of raw nuts would be a good addition but be sure they are unsalted.

If you don’t have a tree you could decorate this way, you could simply put out an aluminum foil pie pan and put seeds or bread crumbs in it. If you can place it in a position where you can see it from your window, you can reap the extra benefit of watching the birds that come and go. You might want to get a book identifying birds and keep a record of how many different types of birds that visit your feeder. It makes a nice hobby for the whole family.