Help your garden birds this winter
As temperatures plummet, the ground hardens up, making it harder for birds to find tasty morsels in our lawns.
Winter bird food
At this time of year, black oil sunflower seeds are a great choice for the bird table. These particular seeds have a thinner than normal shell, which makes them easier to break down in cold weather. They also have higher oil content than most other seeds, which delivers a more nutritious and efficient feed. Particularly important at this time of year, when more natural food sources are scarce.
Winter time is also a good time for using suet in the garden for your visiting birds. For large parts of the year a lot of people like to avoid this product, given that it is prone to melting, but at the moment we have a few months ahead of us where that is highly unlikely! Suet can be found in a range of different blends and it can be fun to experiment to see what birds you can attract to your garden.
Home made bird food
If you want to put something together yourself, then unwanted fruit that can serve very well in the winter time. Some of our summer songbirds will migrate during the winter months, but there are plenty of other birds that will welcome a fruity winter time treat. Simply chop up some apples, make some orange wedges, cut up some banana’s and slice a few grapes. Melon rind is another option, and means you can still enjoy the fruit before effectively recycling what is left over.
Just like the autumn time, peanuts are an excellent choice in the winter months. The main reason for this is that the peanuts don’t freeze. Allowing all of your visiting birds to digest the high energy nuts 24/7. You can choose to put them out shelled or unshelled, and even smearing peanut butter on a tree outside will be welcome!
Salt for garden birds
Salt is a surprising dietary requirement for many of our garden breeds in the winter months. Unfortunately, the only place that salt is abundantly available during this time of year is on our roads. Once temperatures plunge, many of our roads are gritted on a regular basis. This provides birds with an almost limitless supply of salt, but it is also a dangerous location for them to be.
It’s very easy to provide salt for visiting birds yourself. Simply create a strong salt water solution and allow it to evaporate in a saucer on your bird table. This will leave salt crystals which will be easy for your visiting birds to feed on. Be careful not to allow this solution to get onto your lawn though. Salt can restrict the growth of grass and could potentially leave your garden in a poor state for the arrival of spring.
Choosing bird food
If you don’t have time to make your own mixes for birds in your garden, you can find plenty of pre-prepared products at Dobbies online and in-store. When picking winter bird food, try and choose simple bird seed mixes and especially those with sunflower seeds. Avoid mixes high in fillers such as wheat and corn and you will be doing your garden visitors a great service!
