Types of Bird Food for Winter Season
∙ min read
Winter offers some of the best opportunities to bring birds up close and personal to your home. While fewer bird species hang around during the cold months, they tend to rely more heavily on help from humans. You can find various kinds of bird food to attract birds into your yard and deliver hours of enjoyment by watching their activities.
Fortunately, many bird feeding products make things easy and affordable for you. Of course, you will want to match your feeders with the type of food you are presenting. You can also look into birdhouses and birdbaths that enable your feathered friends to flourish in the winter season. This is a great way to help nature and enjoy the beauty of cardinals, nuthatches, goldfinches, woodpeckers, and other bird types. Here is a list to help you select the best types of bird food for winter season.
The Power of Suet
Suet is a high-energy treat that helps birds cope with the winter weather. Woodpeckers especially love it, and you can often view a red-bellied woodpecker, a hairy woodpecker, or a downy woodpecker feeding on suet. Many other bird types, including nuthatches, chickadees, and titmice, take advantage of this offering.
Suet for birds can be purchased in small or large packages. Suet products come in many shapes and forms:
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High Energy suet packs of 11.5 ounces by Nature's Nuts
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Suet kibbles assorted species beef suet of 2.2 pounds by Cole's
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Nutty suet cakes pack of 12 by Audubon Park
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Hot pepper suet of mixed grains pack of 12 by C&S Products
It can take a while to attract the winter birds once the suet is hung, so don't get discouraged. Slowly, though, the birds will find the treat, and once they do, they will keep coming back. To make your purchases more economical, buying in bulk helps. Always store the bird food in an air-tight container off-limits to pets and other animals. You can find a variety of suet feeders that differ slightly on how you present the food to your birds.
The Audubon Steel Suet Feeder is a great choice, or if you are looking for something more decorative, you can choose the Nature's Way Wild Bird and Finch 3 qt Cedar Bird Feeder.
The Attraction of Seeds
Many backyard birds love seeds throughout the year, but this food source is in lower abundance in winter and can be hard to find.
One excellent option is black oil sunflower seed, as birds like jays and grosbeaks often flock to this food source. Kaytee offers a variety of songbird black oil sunflower seed packages so that you can find the right size for your backyard birds.
The winter wouldn't be complete without offering thistle seeds to the smaller birds in your neighborhood. A variety of finches love to dine on these tiny seeds, and they often flock to your feeders at the same time. This gives them protection in numbers and helps them spot the presence of hawks that might be around. The Audubon Finch Metal Thistle Feeder is an excellent option for these kinds of seeds; its unique metal seed ports will intrigue birds. In addition, the cheerful colors of purple finches and goldfinches can brighten up a winter day.
Nyjer seed is a good option for your birds. It comes from the African yellow daisy and is very similar to the thistle seed, though it is not precisely the same. Like thistle, though, it is high in oil, and it is a nutritious offering for your birds.
The Choice of Creative Options
When looking for what to feed birds in winter, you have many excellent choices. Some of these are a bit creative and deliver a real treat for your local winter birds. Wild Delight offers an advanced formula of bugs N' berries or a three-bug blend containing safflower seeds. This unique product has several advantages:
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It can attract unusual wild birds to your feeder
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It comes in a handy 4.5-pound package
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It helps make bird feeding economical
Wild Bird assorted species of peanuts is also a good choice as this provides added nutrition for your bird friends. A 5-pound bag runs just a little over $23, and it comes with premium-grade whole in-shell peanuts that are natural and unprocessed. It can serve as food for both birds and wildlife. Kaytee peanut cakes are also a popular option to consider.
Winter Bird Feeding
Max Warehouse is the place to stock up on bird food for the winter season. You will find a variety of bird seed mixes and bird feeders to help birds make it through the cold winter months. Now is the time to stock up on the items to enjoy hours of watching these feathered creatures hang out in your backyard. So go to our bird feeding department to find what you need.
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