If you’re a bird lover, now’s the time to provide a way station for species that live in the often-frigid Northeast. Birds are hard-wired from the nest to scavenge for food, but they have a tough time in the winter, when provisions are at their leanest.
When you provide feed, suet and fresh water to the birds, you’ll be rewarded with a constant show of wintering birds: cardinals and finches, robins and wrens, chickadees and woodpeckers, blue jays and doves—and that’s just a partial list of birds that spend the cold season here in South Jersey.
Here are the essentials that will keep your backyard birds plump and happy.
- Fresh water. Warm it if at all possible (heaters for birdbaths use no more energy than a light bulb). Birds will consume snow if they must, but it reduces their body temperature, depleting their energy as they try to warm up.
- High-energy food packed with fat and protein. Load up your feeder with a mix of black oil sunflower seeds, golden safflower, peanuts, thistles, and blended seeds.
- Suet cakes. Make your own by adding rolled oats, seed, cornmeal, raisins, and nuts to melted lard. Set the mixture in a mold and hang it in a wire feeder, or just “patch” it into the nooks and crevices of a tree’s bark. Suet mixtures will keep in the freezer for about two months.
- Special treats. Spread peanut butter on coarse bread, tear it into pieces, and stick it, PB-side down, on the side of a tree.
- Cracked corn and white millet. Throw some out on the lawn so birds can feed on the ground too.
Put feeders and a water source in bushes and in tree branches where so the birds will not be so vulnerable to predators. Cats soon figure out if birds are landing in an unprotected area, and they will pounce.
Brush any snow and ice away from the food supply. If you have berry-laden plants and trees, shake the snow off their branches. And if you drop seed on the ground, don’t drop it into the snow. Stamp out a special spot where the seed is accessible.
It’s unusual to see hummingbirds in the winter, but you may attract them by offering homemade nectar. Just add one part sugar to four parts boiling water and stir. Diluting the mixture is great for orioles (one part sugar to six parts water). Make sure that the mixture cools before serving. Enjoy your winged guests this winter.
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