How to attract birds to your garden

– Super-size it. Elongated suet feeders provide support for woodpeckers, which tend to use their strong tails for balance as they eat. These feeders generally hold two suet cakes, one basket on each side of a board.

Where and how you feed wild birds can be just as important as what you feed them, especially if you're trying to attract just a few favored species.

Encourage small birds, for instance, by putting up specialty feeders that restrict access.

"Wood feeders with vertical bars and feeders covered with wire mesh frustrate the larger birds," says a US. Fish and Wildlife Service fact shees. "Tube feeders without trays also restrict access to small birds. Remove the perches and you've further selected only those birds capable of clinging – finches, chickadees, titmice and woodpeckers. Add vertical perches to tube thistle (nyjer) feeders and you'll limit accessibility primarily to the goldfinches."

Tips on choosing seed
Birds can be as finicky as people about what they eat. So the varieties of birds you attract to your yard will be determined primarily by the kind of seed you offer.

"Watch a feeder filled with a seed mix and you'll see the birds methodically drop or kick out most of the seeds to get to their favorite – sunflower," the US. Fish and Wildlife Service says in a bird feeding fact sheet. "Birds will also kick out artificial 'berry' pellets, processed seed flavored and colored to look like 'real' fruit."

The most effective way to attract a large variety of birds is to put out separate feeders for each food, the agency says. Here is a Fish and Wildlife Service guide matching birds with their favorite foods:

Cracked corn: ducks, geese, quail, mourning doves.

Nyjer: finches, pine siskins, chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, redpolls, doves, and sparrows.

Nectar: hummingbirds, cardinals, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, finches.

Fruit: orioles, mockingbirds, cedar waxwings, tanagers, bluebirds, jays, cardinals, thrushes.

Peanuts: woodpeckers, chickadees, and titmice.

Millet: doves, blackbirds, sparrows, juncos, towhees.

If you want to feed only doves, cardinals, and white-throated sparrows, then switch from black oil sunflower to safflower seed, the agency says.

When is the best time to feed? Many people say all year if you enjoy the sights and sounds of birds.

"Birds can benefit from an additional food source in winter, but the really good time to feed is spring going into summer," says Ms. Cole. "They've got a lot of chicks just coming out (of the nest) and the adults will bring them to the feeders. There's still a lot of migration going on, too.

"Many natural foods haven't matured yet and a lot of insects aren't out in force," Cole says. "So feeding birds at that time works well for them."

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