TEXARKANA, Texas - With birds starting to migrate back north after a long winter, the Discovery Place held its first instructional course Sunday on how to welcome back these fine-feathered friends.
Texarkana Museums System Curator Jamie Simmons, along with the systems' board president, Velvet Cool, conducted about a 90-minute live stream presentation Sunday afternoon via Facebook to residents seeking ways to assemble home-made bird feeders.
Simmons demonstrated how these feeders can be made out of recycled surplus material like pine cones, empty plastic soft drink bottles, milk cartons, empty tin fruit and egg cartons. Most of these feeders can be suspended in the outside air by strings or different colored yarn attached to tree limbs.
"We also want to help people attract birds to their backyard feeders because some birds not only like bird feed, they also like peanuts, peanut butter and some fruits like blue berries and black berries," Simmons said. "You can also use plastic restaurant containers as bird feeders."
Simmons added that different birds are also attracted by different colors and she encouraged her Facebook viewers to paint their bird feeders bright colors, such as blue or red
"Making bird feeders is also a great way to reuse old, broken ceramic cups and saucers," she said.
Simmons demonstrated that some bird feeders could even be made by cutting an orange in half, scooping out the flesh from one half of the orange and using the outer skin as a cup-shaped container for bird seed.
Beyond using bird feed itself, Simmons cautioned her viewers not to substitute bread or chocolate to feed birds.
"You can also place bird feeders on the ground as well as hang then," she said,
Next Sunday, starting at 2 p.m., Simmons said she will live-stream another program focusing on bird watching.