There is a variety of food that has been designed to make it easy for you to feed the birds that could visit your garden. Some types of food will attract different breeds to others so if you are looking to try and encourage something, in particular, it is worth reading up on this first.
Here are some of the most popular food options:
Fat Snax / Balls
These are a brilliant source of energy for sparrows, starlings, robins, blackbirds and tits. They are high energy suet, cereal and seed mix. There is a huge variety of hanging feeders that will take these but don’t forget to also put some on the ground to cater for all the birds.
Suet
Suet can be particularly attractive to woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, jays, and starlings. Animal fat is easily digested by many birds and as it is a high-energy food it is great for using in Winter
Peanuts
Most popular with woodpeckers, sparrows, greenfinches and tits. You can also consider crushing them to help attract robins, dunnocks & wrens. Never feed whole peanuts at springtime unless they are in a mesh feeder as they can choke young chicks
Seed
There are lots of different mixes available and many contain sunflower seeds, peanuts and flaked maize. Seed mixes can be used on bird tables and feeders.
Small seeds such as millet will attract house sparrows, finches and collared doves whereas mixes with flaked maize are readily taken by blackbirds.
Leftovers
If you have any leftovers such as Cheese, dried fruit, pastry, dry porridge oats, apples and pears, and unsalted bacon rinds they can be left out as a treat too but we would advise you avoid fat and cooked meat as well as bread.
If you’d like to find out more or have questions then please do come and talk to our experts
