First think about feeding the birds from food supplied by trees and shrubs. Check the listings in this bulletin to find the plant preferences of a variety of birds. For example, cardinals, whose flash of red brightens many a back yard, prefer to feast on seeds and berries and will nest in grape, holly, honeysuckle, juniper, multiflora rose, and willow.
Your vegetable garden will be a source of animal life to a variety of insect-devouring birds, including the voracious purple martins. Compost heaps are also a good source of free food. Daily deposits of vegetable and fruit peelings, chicken skin, meat fat scraps, and bread crusts will attract birds, particularly jays, crows, and starlings (also squirrels and raccoons), thus eliminating these aggressive species from your feeding stations. When forked over daily in early spring, the compost will be a constant source of insects and worms for fledglings.
To keep the birds in your area all year, it is advisable to provide supplementary feedings. Although the countryside has an abundance of food in the summer, most urban and some suburban landscapes are too manicured to supply sufficient grubs, insects, and weed seeds. If this is your problem, stock your feeders year-round, until you have established generous plant life.
Wintertime, everywhere, is another story. Even if there is no snow, the land will yield precious little food. Once you have decided to put up a feeder, it is essential that it is never left empty since your birds will become dependent on your winter feeding. Small birds must start eating at sunrise in order to replace body weight lost each night in their efforts to keep warm. Those that cannot find enough food to refuel sufficiently for the night ahead will die. If you leave on vacation and your feeders do not hold an adequate supply, ask a neighbor to keep them filled.
While the birds are feasting free in your yard during the summer, you can grow and gather food for the winter. Dried grains, seeds, nuts, berries, and ears of corn harvested in the autumn can be saved for a midwinter treat. Sunflower seeds are a particular favorite of birds and are very easy to grow. To harvest the seeds for later use and prevent the birds from quickly devouring your entire crop, tie a piece of plastic mesh (an orange bag saved for this purpose works well) around the stem of the growing sunflower and wrap it around the seed head.
To attract birds to a new feeding area, throw down white bread crumbs or cracked corn. Your feeders will have more success if they are near trees where birds can perch or take cover. Ground feeding, however, should not be too close to a dense hedge where cats might hide.
Bird feeders can be as elaborate or as simple as you choose. For example, ears of corn and sunflower heads nailed to a board on the ground will attract several varieties of ground feeders, including pheasants, bobwhites, grouse, cardinals, towhees, grosbeaks, juncos, jays, and sparrows. In bad weather, we shelter the ground feeders by using a couple of sawhorses to support an old door or a large piece of wood, or we set up an old table.
Feeders suspended from tree branches or house eaves and filled with suet or peanut butter will provide protein for the grub-eating and insect-eating birds. Chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, creepers, wrens, and downy and hairy woodpeckers will display their acrobatic skills on these hangers. Any container will do — plastic-mesh onion or fruit bags, coconut shells, margarine cups, cutaway milk cartons, large pine cones, and feeder sticks.
Hang the feeders at least four feet above the ground from branches too thin to take the weight of raccoons and squirrels. Sometimes it is necessary to outwit these creatures by enclosing the suet in vinyl-coated metal mesh baskets (homemade or purchased). Be sure to use vinyl-covered metal because when it is freezing, a bird’s eye can stick to bare metal!
An open-sided, covered feeding platform is easily constructed from inexpensive #2 pine, fir, spruce, or cedar. A more protected, three-sided version can be made from a wooden wine or fruit crate. Mount the feeder on a four-foot to five-foot post and add a one-inch lip to prevent the grain from being scattered. A suet container, such as a vinyl-covered soap dish, can be attached inside or out. (This type of crate also makes a nest shelf for robins, phoebes, or swallows depending on its location. In winter, it provides shelter for numerous small birds.)
A tufted titmouse and a chickadee feast on suet in a plastic mesh bag (left) and a chickadee dines on seeds in a hollowed-out coconut (right).
To discourage raiding raccoons and squirrels, mount platform feeders, or those that do not have weight-control bars, on metal poles. A baffle — a twelve-inch wide piece of metal wrapped like a funnel around the pole — will provide further protection. Also, do not place feeders on, or under, heavy branches.
Because our window shelf is protected by a roof overhang, we have just a simple twelve-inch by thirty-inch pine shelf with one-inch sides, supported by two one-inch corner brackets and suspended by two painted, black, metal chain links. This type of shelf can be constructed with two twelve-inch-high sides and a cover for shelter. The sides can be further adapted by attaching suet or seed hoppers to them. We put suet and peanut butter mixes in margarine tubs and other banquet fare of whole and cracked nuts, raisins, and ground meat leftovers on the shelf.
The metal baffle on this simple feeder (a fruit crate mounted on a pole) will keep the squirrels away.