For our songbirds
 

Along the lines of saving scraps to stuff dog beds: It will soon be the birds' nesting season, and when building their nests they love to use the tiny bits we trim off when squaring blocks or straightening seam allowances. Just be sure your pieces aren't too long--about an inch and a half is good. (Longer than that, baby birds can get them tangled around their legs, and that's a disaster.) If you put the scraps in the branches of shrubbery or low trees, birds will find them.

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Great idea!!!

Actually, fabric scraps can be toxic to baby birds. They retain moisture too long after rain, so the babies are much more likely to develop pneumonia. It's better for birds to use grasses, reeds, etc. that shed moisture rapidly. Also, any unwashed fabric scraps would have chemicals that are probably not good for birds.

It's a suggestion from the Audubon Society. And all my fabric is washed before use.

i'm saving all my scraps from my Dear Janes for the birds. i think the ground critters like them too

Oh, what a colorful yard we weave....

I will have to remember to wash them, chop them up further before putting them out. It is fun to check my robin's nest for any quilting fabric. She comes back every year under my deck, and likes to drive my little dogs crazy. I think it is a game they play.

What a great idea! During nesting season, I usually toss my DH hair clippings in the yard. He has really coarse kinky hair. Sadly though, with each passing year, there's less to offer to the birds. :)

My fabric is always washed before I use it. When the tiny scraps are laid out in the sun for awhile (and rain), any residue is gone. If the fabric scraps smell, then you know they are still toxic.

I've been thinking of doing that, too!

Thank you for the reminder! I used to do this every Spring, but somehow I've forgotten the last few years. I'm going to make sure to have them out there this year for my feathered friends. :)

I contribute bags of dog fluff to our local birds. The Corgis are molting right now, so there is tons of undercoat available to the birds. At our old house, the birds had very soft nests as a result of our neighbor's malamutes.

Cheers, K

Not very healthy for the baby birds. Maybe if the fabric is prewashed - our cotton fabric is loaded with unhealthy chemicals. Years ago the manufacturers used formaldyhyde as a preservative and that is a carcinogenic. don't know what awlful chemicals China is putting into the fabric nowadays.

Formaldehyde is still used to coat almost all fabrics, not just by China. It is used to prevent wrinkles and keep bugs away.

I always put out thread clippings but not fabric. I do save fabric for dog beds.

For our songbirds
 

Yarn works great too and is so colorful!

I brush Tink outside, so they get lots of extra fluff from her...plus I put the trimmed threads into one of my garden pots...they coming zooming in to get the trimmed embroidery threads.

Also, you can save the lint from your dryer and put out for them!

I always wondered about the dryer lint. I thought, surely there should be something we can do with this besides throw it away.

PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!!!!

There was an article in "Birds and Blooms" about the fabric and thread getting wet causing the baby birds to die of the cold and damp.

I don't know who thought of this but they are terribly wrong if they think it is a good idea. If you want to give the birds nesting material then use pet or human hair. I'm sure if you went to a local beauty salon or pet groomer they would let you have hair to put out for bird nests.

One fall after the leaves had fallen I saw a nest made up of gray hair, that was the neatest looking nest I had everseen.

Just a reminder - John James Audobon killed all the birds he used for his pictures, they weren't painted from live birds.

I'm not saying the Audubon Society is not a good thing but I trust myself to know that if I am cold and wet I will probably get sick and a baby bird does not have the ability to see a doctor or take meds if it gets cold and sick.

I enjoy looking at the beautiful photos in Birds and Blooms. It's a nice publication, but no serious birder I know considers it an authoritative resource.

Abandoned nests we've inspected over the years (empty--no dead baby birds) have had at most four or five of my tiny fabric strings like the ones shown in the OP. The amount of moisture they could retain would be no more consequential than that retained by the twigs and leaves and bits of moss that also make up the nests.

That isn't relevant to this subject.

We make Santa Birdies in the spring with quilt batting, or stuffing, puttin out in the spring in the bushes for them to get at. Few years ago, gave Pa a hair cuttin out in the yard, found a small nest that fall with a lot of grey hair in it. Still got it. Hope the quilt batting is ok for them. They do look like little santa birdies with a beakfull of that. Been doing it for years.