gourd birds: fall craft

My daughter and I recently attended a wonderful birthday party where the favorite activity was making "gourd birds". With simple craft supplies: craft feathers, push pins, and googlie eyes the children created the most amazing flock. We brought ours home in a recycled paper nest (free formed scrunched paper). Of course, we have never looked at gourds the same way again. Every visit to a farm stand or market had us all searching for the perfect beak or interesting neck. We obviously needed to make a family for our feathered friend above. So I asked the party girl's mother if we might share this project with all of you while we were at it. She let me know that they had originally made them for their Sunday school class as part of the preparations for Sukkot ,and that there were many options for decorating that we hadn't tried: fashioning eyes and feathers from magazine pages, pipe cleaner feet...

With the idea that we might try our hand at creating other bird "species", out to the woods we went. We looked for leaves, berries, and pods that had sturdy stems and stalks. We had never looked for "bird eyes" before, so this was an exciting treasure hunt. With all of our possibilities spread out, I poked holes with a push pin right where my daughter directed. Gourds have tough skin, so it's best that this job is left to grown ups and older children. The adorning is the fun part, kind of like a Mr. Potato Head!


After some disappointments with leaf stems breaking, I came up with the idea of toothpicks and corn husks.

Toothpicks ended up being the perfect material for feet, too!

Don't you think these lovely fowl would be perfect in a fall centerpiece or as part of your family nature table?