Winter bird feeding tips

Winter is the time to change the composition of bird foods offered and perhaps the arrangement of your feeders. This will aid in the birds' survival, as well as increase your viewing enjoyment in the snowy months ahead.

Permanent residents, such as chickadees and cardinals, are dependable every year. Some winter visitors are birds of boreal regions. Their feeding patterns are unpredictable and tend to be cyclic. Numbers can peak at three to four or nine to ten year intervals, or they can be "irruptive," meaning periodic appearances of unusually high numbers.

If seeds are in short supply, some species, such as Red-breasted nuthatches, Common and Hoary redpolls, Pine siskins, Red and White-winged crossbills, and Pine grosbeaks, may wander far from their normal ranges in search of food.

WINTER FOOD
It is relatively easy to plan for winter bird feeding. There are three main choices of food: large seeds, small seeds, and suet.

Large seeds include black-oil sunflower, striped sunflower, safflower, peanuts, shelled corn, ear corn and cardinal mixes that contain sunflower, safflower and peanuts.

About 80 to 90 percent of seed, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources recommends using black-oil sunflower seeds and cardinal mixes. These have the greatest appeal to the broadest variety of winter birds and contain a high energy content.

The list of birds that favor sunflower seeds is impressive: Northern cardinals, Blue jays, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed chickadees, House and Purple finches, American goldfinches, Evening and Pine grosbeaks, Gray and Steller's jays, nuthatches, crossbills, titmice, and many more.

If you provide sunflower seeds on your deck or patio, you may wish to try sunflower hearts to avoid the mess that occurs in spring when you discover several inches of sunflower seed hulls under your feeders.

Peanuts provide a nutritious diet for birds, including Black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and Blue jays. Even Northern cardinals will come to a peanut feeder.

FEEDER LAYOUT
When switching from fall to winter feeding, you may want to place a group of feeders closer to the house. Tray feeders and fly-through feeders can be placed on a deck railing so they are easier to access when the snows accumulate.

As in fall feeding, use several feeder clusters of three to four feeders per cluster and a ground feeding site. Each cluster has a variety of feeder types that offer larger seeds, smaller seeds, and suet.

Corn feeders are placed toward the back of the yard to accommodate squirrels, rabbits and pheasants.

If possible, feeders should be near the protective cover of pines, spruce or juniper trees so birds can rest in the shelter of those trees between visits to the feeders.

The best feeder sites are downwind from the shelter provided by conifers, switchgrass plantings, cattail marshes or buildings. To avoid giving raptors or cats an advantage in catching birds, feeders should be at least ten feet from the nearest cover where such predators could hide.

Feeder with wire. If your feeders are within ten feet from heavy cover, encircle them with 2" x 4" welded wire fencing at least thirty inches high and about six to eight feet in diameter. This will help deter predators.

If placing feeders closer to the house increases the number of bird/window collisions, try using stick-on window feeders, or move feeders to within one or two feet of the window.

By reducing the distance between the feeder and the window, birds have less room to build up the speed that causes serious collisions.

--From the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources