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Attracting Birds: A Guide to Bird Food |
Like humans, birds have their favourite foods.
Here's a quick guide and a few tips to help you attract the birds you want to visit your feeding station.
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Food |
Birds |
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Peanuts |
jays, cardinals, chickadees, juncos,
sparrows, towhees, woodpeckers |
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Suet |
woodpeckers, jays, nuthatches,
grosbeaks, bushtits, chickadees, kinglets |
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Mixed seeds
and millet |
doves, sparrows, finches, towhees, doves |
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Niger Seed |
finches, goldfinches, Pine Siskins |
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Sunflower
Seeds |
cardinals, chickadees, doves, finches,
sparrows, jays, some woodpeckers |
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Black-oil Sunflower
Seeds |
juncos, nuthatches, chickadees
sparrows and most other seed-eating birds |
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Suet attracts all sorts of birds including mighty woodpeckers and tiny chickadees. You can buy inexpensive blocks like this one, or even better yet, you can make your own.
Check out a few recipes by clicking here. |
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Mixed bird seed can attract a lot of different birds, however it's important to spend a bit more and get a good quality one. Many cheap selections contain a lots of "filler" which birds simply don't like. |
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Unshelled peanuts may not be every bird's favourite food, but some like the Stellar's Jay love them. To see a photo-essay feature with a Steller's Jay and its peanuts, click here. |
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A bag of mixed sunflower seeds will include gray-striped sunflowers seeds as well as some hulled sunflower seeds and black-oil sunflower seeds. |
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Black-oil sunflower seeds attract almost every seed-eating bird. It is high in fat and provides lots of energy to birds of all sizes and is highly recommended. |
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Cedar Waxwings love to feed on berries and fruit. |
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The Black-headed Grosbeak has a specially design bill that helps it pop open seeds. |
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American Goldfinches as well as other finches and small song birds love Niger seed.
Sometimes this seed is called thistle seed, although it has nothing at all to do with thistles. You might also see it spelled "Nyjer." It is a rich source of energy. |
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Shelled peanuts are enjoyed by many birds including woodpeckers, cardinals and jays. You can by inexpensive ones like these at bird food stores, |
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Many birds including robins, jays and orioles love to feed on fresh or dried fruit. |
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The Spotted Towhee is a large ground-feeding sparrow. It will often feed on seeds spilled by other birds. |
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Suet can be stuffed into a pine cone like this one. |
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Also at the Inn: |
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Recipe Collection
Enjoy this variety of recipes for tasty treats (like this amazing seed wreath) to prepare for visitors to your bird feeding station. |
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Bird Bills
The beaks, or more correctly, the bills of birds are cleverly adapted to securing the food they prefer.
Meet some probers, pickers, diggers and fishers! |
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