Attracting birds to acreages or backyards can be a fun and educational experience for the whole family. There are several things required to fulfill the needs of birds and attract them to your home, including food, shelter, space and water. Birdfeeders near homes bring the color and beauty of birds up close and personal, and supplement birds’ primary habitat of backyard and neighborhood trees and shrubs.
Some birds are seed eaters, other eat primarily fruit, and other insects. The types of food you provide will determine the types of birds you attract. Small black oil-type sunflower seeds are overall the most widely preferred bird seed. They have high energy content, and the thin shells allow easy use by smaller birds such as chickadees, pine siskins, juncos, and native sparrows, as well as cardinals, mourning doves, grosbeaks, and others. White proso millet is another attractive seed used especially by smaller birds, and a small amount of finely cracked corn is good in a mix. Safflower is being used increasingly, with reports that cardinals, chickadees, house and purple finches, nuthatches, and mourning doves consume it, but that it is less attractive to grackles, starlings, house sparrows, and squirrels. A typical mixture includes 50% small, black oil-type sunflower seeds, 35% white proso millet and 15% finely cracked corn.
Add suet, or hard beef fat, for winter energy and as a special treat for woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and other insect eaters. Commercial no-melt suet preparations can be used throughout the year. Typical suet is the hard, white fat from around the beef kidney area, often available from butcher counters. Other fat sources including deer fat and rib cages also can be used. Suet can be fed as it comes from the butcher or melted and mixed with other foods to form suet cakes. Suet is sometimes supplemented with a protein source such as canned dog food, dehydrated eggs, or peanut butter.
One option is to make your own suet cakes for the birds. Here is one recipe: 3 cups melted suet, 3 cups cornmeal (preferably yellow) and 1 cup peanut butter (preferably chunk style). Melt the suet in a pan and add the cornmeal and peanut butter. Bird seeds, raisins, rolled oats, unsalted nutmeats, dehydrated egg, apple bits, brown sugar, honey or syrup also can be added. Add or subtract ingredients depending on what is handy, but avoid ingredients that have rich seasoning. Pour the suet mixture into cupcake papers in a muffin tin to harden. Remove the papers, and the cakes are ready for the birds. The melted suet mixture can also be poured into cut-down cardboard milk cartons or into 1-inch holes drilled into a small log. These can be placed out directly for feeding.
Suet can be fed in a net onion or orange sack or in a suet feeder. Hang suet feeders on or near a tree, on a wooden post, or perhaps from your seed feeder. It is best to keep suet in shade so that it doesn't melt. Keep it high enough so dogs can't reach it.
Place feeders so that birds are protected from harsh winds and predators, and so that window collisions are avoided. Window collisions often occur when frightened birds fly out from feeders, a location approximately ten feet from the protective cover of bushes or trees is ideal. If collisions occur move feeders either closer or farther away from windows and eliminate the appearance of an open flight path with window coverings. Keep feeders clean to help keep birds healthy.
A birdfeeder is an important food source when temperatures hover around zero degrees. When birds' food sources are covered in snow, they discover backyard feeders and often make them a regular stopping point; thus during long periods of near-zero weather, the birds rely on feeders being consistently full. Feeders are also important in early spring, when less food is available. Diligent bird feeding will result in a wide variety of visitors to the feeder during summer months too. As an added bonus, well-nourished birds reproduce better in the spring, which means more birds and possibly fewer insects.
SOURCES: Ron Johnson, UNL Wildlife Specialist & Don Janssen, UNL Extension Educator. Sarah Browning is a Horticulture Extension Educator with the University of Nebraska- Lincoln Extension in Dodge and Saunders Counties. She can be contacted by phone at 727-2775: by mail at 1206 W. 23rd Street, Fremont, NE 68025: or by e-mail at sbrowning2@unl.edu
