Birds love food that is fresh and familiar, and that is something that you may already have in your kitchen or pantry. Looking forward to a cool season of fall or winter, birds will often gear up for the chilly nights, and birds love a good protein or grain to keep them warm. Fluffing feathers only works so much, when you have no food to turn into heat. True, chickadees often will hibernate from the cold, chilling their internal temperature for days down close to freezing, but they still need good food stuffs to get them there. So, if you don’t have bird food, but you have some time, here is what you can do to help them through the winter days ahead.
Birds Love Bread
With many birds, an old muffin or bread slice will happily bring them the joy of picking at the grain, and the crust to digest a good source of carbohydrate. They will have happy days if they decide that the bread or cake is safe to eat. The best way to offer a day old crust of bread, is to place it on a flat bottomed feeder, which can hang near their seed sources. Clearly, this can’t be the only food that is offered, because birds love bread, but they do need essential oils and proteins. Do offer a sweet bread, a cracker, or even a sugary donut on a tray that is built for bird feet to safely clasp and hold. Even a nice clean suet tray that hangs, with sliced bread in the middle makes for a bird friendly presentation.
Birds Love Fat
Any beef or protein fat is a happy occurrence for birds hungry for protein. Next time you make your meat for breakfast, save the bacon fat and cool it in a pan. Better yet, place it in an old plastic container that you can safely cut away from, and mix in some of that day old bread. Whoops, you have officially made your own suet cake! This does not work in areas where the temperature is above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but you can still offer this if you freeze it. It is not as appealing if frozen, but birds will learn to look for the cake when you offer it, and will learn to manage the temperature once it is perfect. Fun watching for you, anxiety and fluttering of wings for your feathered friends.
Birds love nuts and fruit
Who doesn’t love a trail mix of dried and unsalted nuts? Birds love cranberry, apples, and all kinds of unsalted nuts. Salt is not an agreeable item to offer to birds, and salt is not on the birds love list. So if you want to have some fun, buy a bag of unsalted peanuts for you and your birds, and watch them come to harvest. We place unsalted peanuts on our deck every sunday am, and they wake me up for them too. If this isn’t your idea of a fun wake up call, be sure to leave the peanuts on your next nature walk in the woods, for another time.