Homemade wild bird food can be created using ingredients found around your house – an enjoyable activity to share with children!
Peanuts or sunflower seeds are staple ingredients, while other tasty additions include black oil sunflower seeds, striped sunflower seeds and white millet. All these items provide protein, calcium, magnesium and oil – essential components in a diet.
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Feed Mixes
Making your own bird feed blends allows you to select and avoid ingredients with potential weed seeds, unlike store-bought mixes which might include red millet (white proso millet is preferable) or wheat fillers that birds don’t eat and which could end up under your feeders.
Stale bread and other kitchen scraps can provide excellent sources of carbohydrates for wild birds, but only small pieces should be fed as mold and fungus can lead to aspergillosis in birds. Cheese provides extra protein and fat content and should also be included as an add-in in homemade food products.
Peanuts, whether hulled or with shells on, are another favorite food source for woodpeckers and nuthatches as well as chickadees.
Fat Balls
Garden centres sell suet or fat balls for your bird, but making your own mixture at home is much simpler – and takes only minutes!
Before adding dry ingredients, start by softening your chosen fat, such as lard, suet or beef dripping (though any that contain salt should be avoided). Next add any dry ingredients – these could range from raisins and sultanas through porridge oats, rye breadcrumbs, peanuts and mixed seed as desired; roughly two parts dry ingredients to one part wet ingredients should suffice.
Once your mix is prepared, place it into small containers – such as empty plastic takeaway boxes and yoghurt pots – before poking a hole at the bottom and tying string through it to hang up for birds to enjoy.
Suet
Suet can provide essential food sources for many wild bird species during the cold months of winter when there may be little available food sources for them to eat. You can easily create it yourself using household ingredients – this method also attracts woodpeckers and nuthatches that enjoy fat sources such as tree trunks.
Start by melting lard and mixing in peanut butter until well mixed, before stirring in rolled oats and cornmeal as well as any additional seeds or nuts you may wish to include. Once mixed, mold into logs or rings to hang on tree feeders; add dried mealworms if possible in order to attract insectivores such as robins. Avoid commercially produced suet as this may contain ragweed seeds which cause human allergies while not providing sufficient nutrition for wild birds and it tends to be expensive!
Fruit
Birds often need additional food during winter when natural supplies have been cut back due to freezing temperatures and snowfall, but people can help by creating simple and cost-effective home-made feeds for their feathered friends to stay happy, healthy, and active through this harsh period.
Breadcrumbs, kitchen scraps, pantry grains and dried fruit can be mixed together into crumbles or cakes and offered to flocking birds with generalist diets, such as pigeons, doves, grackles, house sparrows and crows.
Avoid feeding birds any tinned, processed or sugary foods as these are unsuitable and potentially dangerous to them. Also be wary that some commercially available feeds contain seeds of the invasive weed ragweed which may trigger seasonal allergies in both adults and children. To make sure you purchase high-quality wild bird feed, look for products with ingredients listed on their labels – these should contain guaranteed amounts of crude fat, crude protein, and crude fiber as these will ensure birds can metabolise it safely.
