The best way to attract more species is to offer a variety of foods that different types of birds love. Some of the most popular food for goldfinches are niger seeds, while long-tailed tits prefer suet blocks and sunflower hearts. You can find more information about what type of foods are best for different birds in our “What to Feed Wild Birds in Your Garden” guide. Remember to keep a steady supply of food for your bird feeders, or they’ll simply leave your garden in search of another source of food.
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Sunflower hearts
You can attract a wide range of species to your garden by growing sunflower hearts. Goldfinches and tits are particularly fond of sunflower hearts. Softbills, however, don’t usually eat sunflower hearts. To make it easier for wild birds to eat sunflower hearts, you can break them into small pieces. Sunflower hearts make ideal chips during the fledgling season. Although they are a relatively cheap food source, they are often consumed faster than other types of seed.
Cracked corn
Generally, cracked corn can be used in tube feeders and hoppers, and can also be ground for feeding wild birds. Cracked corn is available by the pound and in packages ranging from 5 pounds to 44 pounds. Mother Nature’s Bird Seed is a good brand for this purpose. However, be aware that cracked corn has a tendency to mold and may not be suitable for all types of birds.
White proso millet
Millet is a favorite food of ground-feeding birds. While this type of grain is not very attractive to smaller species, it does attract a variety of ground-feeding birds including starlings, turkeys, and doves. It can be cultivated in a garden as part of a birdseed garden. However, be sure not to feed it to smaller species because it can decay and pose a hazard to other birds. Moreover, it is not sensitive to soil acidity.
Living mealworms
To attract wild birds to your backyard, place dried mealworms or live mealworms in your garden. Live mealworms may take longer to find, so you should put them out regularly. You can also soak dried mealworms before offering them to the birds. A single hungry bird will quickly attract others, so keep offering them. Soon you will see birds lining up to get a bite of your mealworms.
Fruit
One way to feed birds in your garden is to hang out a bowl of unripe fruits. For example, if you have an orange, you can let it sit out on your counter until it softens. Then you can give it to birds. You can also put out rinds of melons and seeds of ripe fruits. Windfall fruit such as apples can be fed to birds.
Vegetables
Vegetables are one of the best foods to attract wildlife to your backyard. Birds, like robins, crows, and finches, feed on the veggies and seeds from your garden. They are important predators of pests that damage crops. In addition to their food-gathering habits, some species of birds also pollinate crops, which encourages higher yields of vegetables.
Kitchen scraps
Adding scraps from the kitchen to bird food is an easy way to provide vital fats and carbohydrates to wild birds. The foodstuffs you throw away are highly nutritious and will reduce the amount of trash in your yard. Kitchen scraps can be chopped and put on a bird table, mixed with suet and pressed into coconut shells and plastic containers. You can also offer unwanted cat or dog food to birds.
