Secrets of Successful Fall Bird Feeding Bill Thompson, III a Special Publication From

Secrets of Successful Fall Bird Feeding Bill Thompson, III a special publication from Top 10 Things to Frequently Foods for Watch for Asked Winter Bird in the Backyard Backyard Feeding in Autumn Questions Top 10 Foods for Winter Bird Feeding Blue jay. Winter: ’Tis the season for success in attracting winter feeding birds all across North birds to your feeders, the first America, especially in those thing you need to determine is regions where it gets mighty whether you are feeding the cold and snowy. If you are a right foods. If you are not veteran bird feeder, you’ve giving the birds what they probably gained lots of insight want, you might not have many into the foods your backyard birds. birds prefer. Perhaps you’ve The following ten foods are learned through trial and error, extremely popular with or perhaps you did your backyard birds all across North homework and read up on the America. If your favorite bird subject. food is not on this list, please let If you are just getting me know. After all, I am not started in bird feeding, or if omniscient. I’m just a guy living you are frustrated by a lack of in Ohio who likes to feed birds. ADOBE STOCK 10. Black-oil sunflower seed. This seed is the hamburger of White-breasted the bird world. Almost any nuthatch. bird that will visit a bird feeder will eat black-oil sunflower. Birds that can’t crack the seeds themselves will scour the ground under the feeders, picking up bits and pieces. Bird feeding in North America took a major leap forward when black-oil sunflower became widely available in the early 1980s. Why do birds prefer it? The outer shell of a black-oil sunflower seed is thinner and easier to crack than that of striped sunflower. Black-oil sunflower kernels have a higher great fuel for birds in winter. fat content than striped Several major feeder sunflower seeds, and so make a manufacturers produce sturdy, great winter diet staple. Striped efficient tube-shaped peanut sunflower is still fine, and feeders. Woodpeckers, jays, evening grosbeaks, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, and jays, and other big-billed birds titmice will readily visit a may even prefer it slightly, but feeder for this high-protein, black-oil sunflower seed is high-energy food. Even better at attracting a wide cardinals and finches will eat variety of birds to your winter peanuts. Whole peanuts—in feeder. Hulled sunflower seeds, the shell—attract jays and aka sunflower hearts, provide a woodpeckers, but not smaller no-mess option. birds. Birds love peanut butter, too—just avoid brands that 9. Peanuts. Shelled (which contain partially hydrogenated means without a shell), dry- oil, aka trans fat. Be warned, roasted, and unsalted peanuts though, that squirrels love are a fairly recent trend in bird peanuts in any form. feeding, at least in North America. In Europe, feeding 8. Suet. Most humans don’t peanuts has been popular for a want a lot of fat in their diet, long time. Peanuts provide but for birds in winter, fat is an BRUCE WUNDERLICH protein and fat, so they’re a excellent source of energy. Dark-eyed junco. Commercial suet blocks are include dyed seed meant for pet available wherever birdseed is birds, wheat, and some forms sold. Or look for raw suet in of red milo that only birds in the meat isle of your grocery the Desert Southwest seem to store. Ask for it at the butcher eat. Good mixed seed has a counter if you don’t see large amount of sunflower packages of it on display. It is seed, cracked corn, white proso fine to feed small chunks of millet, and perhaps some raw suet to wild birds, but it peanut chips. You get what you does become rancid faster than pay for when it comes to seed commercial blocks, especially mixes. Read the ingredients on during warm weather. No suet the bag, or make your own feeder? No problem—just use seed blend from the seeds an old mesh onion bag. For the mentioned above. adventurous, you can render raw suet to make your own 6. Nyjer/thistle seed. longer-lasting blocks: Melt it Although it can be expensive, down to liquid in a microwave Nyjer (aka thistle) seed is or on the stovetop, monitoring eagerly consumed by all the it carefully. Remove the small finches—goldfinches, unmeltable bits, and allow it to house, purple, and Cassin’s harden. While it’s liquid you finches, pine siskins, and can add other ingredients to it. redpolls. You need to offer this (See “bird treats,” #1, below). tiny seed in a specialized feeder of some kind. The two most 7. Good mixed seed. Is there commonly used types of thistle such a thing as BAD seed mix? feeder are a tube feeder with You bet! Bad mixed seed has small, thistle-seed-sized holes, lots of filler in it—junk and a thistle sock. A thistle ingredients that most birds sock is a fine-mesh, synthetic won’t eat. Bad mixed seed can bag that is filled with Nyjer BRUCE WUNDERLICH seed. Small finches can cling to seed is not as readily eaten by this bag and pull seeds out squirrels and blackbirds. through the mesh. Two (Caveat: Your results may potential problems with thistle: vary.) Feed safflower in any it can go rancid or moldy feeder that can accommodate quickly in wet weather, and on sunflower seed. Avoid offering rare occasion, uneaten seeds safflower on the ground in wet can germinate in your yard, weather: It can quickly become creating a patch of thistle soggy and inedible. You can (Guizotia abyssinica) plants buy safflower in bulk at seed that you may not want. All and feed stores. thistle seed is imported to North America, and it is all 4. Cracked corn. Sparrows, required to be sterilized prior blackbirds, jays, doves, quail, to entry into the United States and squirrels are just a few of and Canada, so sprouting is the creatures attracted to unlikely. cracked corn. Depending on where you live you may also get 5. Safflower. This white, turkeys, deer, elk, moose, and thin-shelled, conical seed is caribou. Fed in moderation, eaten by many birds and has cracked corn will attract almost the reputation for being the any feeder species. Some feeder favorite food of the northern operators use this food to lure cardinal. Some feeder the squirrels away from the operators claim that safflower bird feeders. Squirrels love BILL THOMPSON, III Downy woodpecker on a peanut feeder. Tufted titmouse eating suet dough. we recommend no more than twenty mealworms per bluebird per day. 2. Fruit. Humans are supposed to eat at least three servings of fruit every day. Fruit is also corn—cracked or otherwise— an important dietary element best of all. Whole corn still on for birds, but it can be hard to the cob is fine for squirrels, but find in many areas in not a good bird food because midwinter. Set out grapes, the kernels are too big and hard slices of citrus fruits, apple or for most small birds to digest. banana slices, and even melon Cracked corn is broken into rinds, and watch the birds smaller, more manageable bits chow down. If you want to that many birds will gobble up. feed raisins, chop them up and soak them in warm water first 3. Mealworms. Most feeder to soften them up a bit. birds, except goldfinches, will Offering fruit to tanagers and eat mealworms if you offer orioles is a traditional spring them. Live mealworms are and summer feeding strategy, available in bait stores or by but many winter feeder birds mail order. Don’t worry, they will eat fruit, too. aren’t slimy and gross. In fact, they aren’t even worms; they 1. Homemade bird treats. are larval stage of a beetle You can come up with your (Tenebrio molitor), if that own recipes for winter bird makes you feel better. We grow treats. Smear peanut butter on our own mealworms in a tub a tree trunk, and poke some of old-fashioned rolled oats, peanut bits into it. Melt suet in and feed them to the birds in a your microwave, and pour it shallow ceramic dish. The dish into an ice-cube tray to harden. has slippery sides so the worms Before it solidifies, add peanut can’t crawl out. Bluebirds, in bits, raisins, apple bits, or other particular, go crazy for bird foods. Put the tray in your mealworms and will eat as freezer to harden. Once it does, many as you provide. That can you’ve got cubed bird treats— result in an unbalanced diet, so easy to make and easy to use! a BILL THOMPSON, III Frequently Asked Backyard Questions “There’s a bird question on and the birds will return to your line one. Can somebody pick feeders once the natural food it up?” Between the telephone stores begin to dwindle. One calls, regular mail, and email, final possibility: A predator may we get about 500 bird questions be stalking around your feeder, a year here at Bird Watcher’s forcing the birds into hiding. Digest. Here, culled from our Look for a cat or hawk in your mail piles and question files over yard if your birds disappear all the years, are ten of the most of a sudden. frequently asked backyard bird 9. How can I keep squir- questions. rels from cleaning out my bird 10. Why aren’t there any birds feeders? The best solution is to at my feeder? Birds are seasonal prevent these clever critters from creatures of habit.

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