nature

by Em

This is the perfect time of year to attract birds to your yard for winter feeding—especially if you live in a place that gets cold winter weather. Birds appreciate having access to an easy bite to eat when they’re burning through calories to stay warm.

And feeding some of your neighborhood birds is a fun activity that can help you beat the winter doldrums and give you a chance to observe different species of birds up close.

If you put up a feeder now, the birds will have time to find it before the snow and cold arrive.

Here’s how to get started:

Choose a Feeder

There are so many types of feeders available today—even ones that stick to a window with suction cups!

To choose a feeder, you should think about what kind of birds you want to attract to your yard, patio or deck. If you aren’t sure or aren’t particular about the birds you’d like to see, you can give any kind of feeder a try. Keep in mind:

Hanging feeders attract smaller birds like finches and sparrows.

Hanging peanut feeders attract chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers.

Hopper feeders (that look like a little house) can sit on a pole or deck railing. They protect the bird seed from the elements and can easily host bigger birds like Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays.

I have been feeding backyard birds for more than 3 decades, and I have found that platform feeders attract the biggest variety of birds of all sizes. I think it’s because they can keep a wary eye to the sky for predators while they are eating.

Platform feeders are also available as hanging feeders and come in several different sizes.

I have purchased quality feeders at my local Wild Birds Unlimited store, and my favorite online store is Birds Choice which is headquartered in Wisconsin (not an affiliate link—I just love their feeders!).

You can also find feeders for sale at hardware or home improvement stores or garden centers. And yes you can just order a cheap bird feeder from Amazon. Most any feeder will do the trick—the cheaper ones just won’t last as long in the elements.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a great article that goes into more detail about the pros and cons of each type of feeder, and you can find that here.

Choose a Location

This is the most important step and may require a little bit of trial and error.

To make your birds feel safe from predators while they are feeding, place your feeder close to trees and shrubs. That way they only have to fly a short distance to escape danger. Placing a feeder about 10 to 15 feet from cover will do the trick.

But don’t put your feeder too close to that cover or it will soon become the favorite stop for every neighborhood squirrel and chipmunk! They can jump and climb and will quickly do little rodent math calculations to figure out how to get to your free lunch. If you’re using a pole system, be sure to use a squirrel baffle.

Because the best part about bird feeding is observing your new visitors, choose a feeder spot that you can view from a window or patio door where you might spend some time each day—like a breakfast nook or a home office window.

One important thing to keep in mind is that window strikes kill thousands of birds each year. The professional recommendation is to keep the feeder within three feet of your window (so the birds don’t have enough time to gain enough speed to hurt themselves if they strike the glass), or about 20 to 30 feet away from a window.

If you have a problem with bird strikes, move your feeder immediately. You can also purchase bird strike reflective decals that help birds see and avoid the glass before it’s too late to avoid a strike.

Choose Your Bird Seed

What kind of seed should you put in your new feeder? Once again it all depends on the type of birds you’d like to attract to your property.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has an excellent interactive webpage that lets you choose the species of birds you’d like to see (based on your location) and then suggests what seed and feeders to use.

The seed that attracts the most bird species is black-oil sunflower seeds. You can purchase them with or without shells (without shells makes less of a mess below your feeder) and bagged alone or included with seed mixes.

I have discovered that most birds also like peanut halves (I’m talking about peanuts packaged as bird food, not grocery store peanuts!). They are especially attractive to woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees.

Goldfinches and Pine Siskins prefer thistle/Nyger seed. It doesn’t have a long shelf life, so it’s best purchased in smaller amounts.

The Northern Cardinals and Mourning Doves that visit my feeders prefer safflower. It used to be advertised as a seed that squirrels won’t eat, but trust me, that’s not the case!

Start with a small bag of your preferred seed and see what happens. You can always adjust once you figure out which species of birds live in your neighborhood!

Enjoy Your Feeders

Placing your feeders where you have a view of them and can spend time enjoying them is the most important decision when it comes to winter bird feeding.

Friends and family members often tell me that they’re jealous of all the bird species that visit my backyard. But when I visit their homes, I usually see plenty of different birds. They just aren’t spending as much time looking for birds as I am.

Some birds may only drop in every couple of weeks, or only at a certain time of day (for example, Northern Cardinals prefer dusk and dawn), so if you’re not looking out your window every once in awhile you could miss them.

Project Feederwatch

Finally, if you enjoy birdwatching, you can consider helping the birds by signing up for Project Feederwatch. This citizen science project allows scientists to keep track of bird species numbers and their distribution during the winter months. For a small fee you can sign up and then decide how often you want to count the birds at your feeders. You can find all the information here.

It was a weird spring migration season in our area this year. Many of the birds arrived early or skipped over our county entirely.

Some of the birds are coming from as far as South or Central America where they spend their winters. As they move through the United States they stop along the way to rest and eat and get hydrated before moving on to their summer nesting territories in Canada (and for some, the Arctic). Usually our area sees large numbers of different species of birds for many days starting in late April and extending into mid-May. This year their numbers were much lower.

Despite that challenge, Jill and I still managed to find about 160 bird species which is the most we’ve ever seen during a spring migration season. Part of that is because the weather warmed up early which allowed us many more opportunities to go hiking in late March and throughout April to try to find and observe different birds.

Here is why we love birdwatching. These are just a few of the beautiful species we got to see during migration. We found most of them within a 30 mile radius of our homes and some of them even visited our backyards!

Note: While we love to take nature photos, the trees were way too leafed out this year to get any decent photos of birds, so we’re thankful to Canva for these images.

Something that came in quite handy for us this season were these lightweight, fold-out little guides of shorebirds, raptors and waterfowl (those are not affiliate links). The guides are easy to carry on a hike or store in a vehicle glove box. In addition there are guides for general birds of North America and warblers. We also relied on fellow birders to help us find or identify birds. Most birders are happy to share what bird species they’ve seen or to point out the location of a specific bird.

There are still plenty of opportunities to observe birds this summer in your backyard, local park or nature preserve. It’s a little harder to see them in the leafed-out trees and they don’t need to sing as much now that most of them are paired up with mates, but you’ll no doubt see them tirelessly collecting insects and spiders to feed their young.

The Merlin app and the All About Birds website from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are great free resources to help you get to know the bird species in your area.