Fleece for the birds

I can't find the reference any more, but our local paper had something about this which seemed like such a good idea that I rushed out and did it right away. Birds it seem really like all kinds of fleece to line their nests with - it keeps the baby birds just as softly warm as our wooly sweaters do us. Most spinners tend to accumulate lots of small fleece samples, not all of which get spun up into well-catalogued swatches ;-). You can also spare for the birds some of the leavings from combing, or whatever chaffy bits you pick out when sorting fleece.

So what you do is go to the supermarket, and get one of those heinous net bags of fruit or vegetables. The larger the mesh the better, and as you can see above, green would be most becoming. Open one end and dutifully eat all the fruit, or at least take them out. Fill the bag loosely with odd and ends of fleece and/or short bits of yarn. Tie a string through the top, pull closed, and tie the string to a suitable tree branch (keeping in mind our feline friends' ability to leap...). Then quietly retire with a book to a corner of the garden and watch the happy parents come and pluck it all out.

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