Knowing Your Wild Bird Food – An Important Skill
Knowing what type of wild bird food to put out when is an important skill to have as a backyard bird watcher.
Some foods are better utilized in the winter when food is harder to find for birds whereas some foods are better put out in the warmer months when birds are engaging in more seasonal habits like breeding.
Wild bird food in the colder months
Since more typical components of a bird diet such as insects and fruit are less abundant in the colder months , it is vital that you buy some bird seed with a high oil or fat content to keep them going until the weather starts to warm up again.
Seed foods as black oil sunflower seed, peanuts, thistle seed (niger) and suet mixes are all beneficial to birds though if you had to choose one it would be sunflower seed for the extremely high oil content that it contains.
As always, ensure that you are actually buying seed that winter active birds will actually eat. It is no good putting out seed for birds that will only be back in your yard once the temperature starts to rise.
In addition to a constant supply of food you may also want to think about buying a heated birdbath so that the birds can drink. Standing water can be a rarity in very cold climates during winter and your birds will appreciate it.
Wild bird food in the warmer months
Spring and summer are obviously better times to watch birds – the days are longer and the birds are in their full plumage making them more spectacular to view and easier to identify.
One of the most common bird watching myths is that by putting wild bird food out during summer you are going to make birds dependent on being fed and taking away their natural instinct to find food for themselves.
On the contrary, studies have shown that only around a quarter of food that birds eat in a typical day is from a backyard feeding station.
More variety and more opportunity
There is just more of an abundance of different species in the warmer months and therefore the type of wild bird food may next to change too.
You may need to go to more effort to entice birds into your yard given the more plentiful supply of food in the surrounding environment. Offer a wide range of fruits, nuts and seeds and even some nectar water for hummingbirds if you know they are around.
Many people will be inclined to put out kitchen scraps but you need to be careful of this, especially when birds are breeding. Young chicks need a balanced, nutritional diet and this means that they shouldn’t have to be eating last night’s leftovers from the kitchen.
You will know if birds are nesting in your area when the adults make frequent, short trips to the feeding station. Eventually you will start to see the chicks emerge and learn how to feed themselves too.
Again, a birdbath with constantly maintained fresh water and some sand grit incorporated into a wild bird food feeder will almost guarantee that you have a yard full of happy healthy visitors, or even residents if you are lucky.