Feeding Garden Birds in Winter: What Actually Helps
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A blue tit weighs about eleven grams. On a long December night it can burn a tenth of its body weight simply staying warm, and it wakes with roughly the morning to put that back. That is the whole of winter bird feeding in one sentence.
Summer feeding is a kindness. Winter feeding is the one that changes outcomes.
The thing almost everyone forgets
Water. Not food.
In a hard frost, birds can usually find something to eat. What they cannot find is anything to drink, because every puddle, pond and bird bath in the street has gone solid at the same time. They need it for drinking and they need it for keeping feathers in condition, and feathers are what keeps them alive overnight.
Put out a shallow dish. Break the ice in the morning and again in the afternoon. Do not use salt or glycerine or anything else to stop it freezing — it gets on the feathers and does real harm. A ball floating on the surface slows the freeze, and tipping the ice out and refilling from the kettle with tepid water takes ten seconds.
If you do one thing differently this winter, make it this.
The part that costs nothing
Feed twice, early and late. First thing, because they have just spent the night burning reserves. And again mid-afternoon, so they go to roost with a full crop. The late feed is the one people miss, and in December it wants doing by about three o'clock.
Then keep doing it. Birds learn your garden and build their day around it. Filling the feeder generously for a fortnight and then forgetting for a week is worse than a small amount put out reliably — you have taught them to come somewhere that turns out to be empty, on the coldest mornings of the year.
Site it sensibly. Within a couple of metres of a hedge or shrub, so there is cover to dive into, but not so close that a cat can sit in it. Somewhere you can see from a window makes it far more likely you will remember.
Clean the feeders. This matters more in winter than at any other time, because more birds are using them and everything is damp. Trichomonosis and salmonella spread at dirty feeders and they kill greenfinches and chaffinches in numbers. Wash them in hot soapy water every couple of weeks, rinse well, dry properly. Move the feeder a few feet now and then so droppings do not build up in one spot.
Take fat balls out of nets. The green plastic netting catches feet and beaks. If yours come in nets, cut them off and put the balls in a proper feeder.
What to put out, and why
Winter is about fat and oil. Anything that is mostly husk and filler is doing very little at minus two.
Fat and suet — the highest energy thing you can offer. Fat balls that come loose, without nets are the sensible format, and there is a 150-ball box if you go through them. Suet blocks come in insect, berry and mealworm, and suet pellets can go straight on a table or the ground for the birds that will not use a hanging feeder — Johnston & Jeff do them with berries or with insects.
Sunflower hearts, if you buy one thing. No husk, so nothing is wasted and nothing is left underneath. Almost everything eats them. Black sunflower is the cheaper way to buy the same idea if you do not mind sweeping up.
Peanuts, in a mesh feeder and never loose. Whole peanuts are excellent for tits, nuthatches and woodpeckers. Always in a proper mesh peanut feeder — a whole nut can choke a chick, and in mild spells there are chicks earlier than you would think.
A high-energy mix for the table. Peckish Winter Warmer is built for exactly this, and the no-mess mixes are worth the extra over a patio or a lawn you care about.
Mealworms for robins and blackbirds. Neither will hang off a feeder. Dried mealworms scattered on the ground or a tray, or Peckish Robin Insect Mix, which is made to go on a table rather than in a tube.
Nyjer, only if you want goldfinches. Tiny, oil-rich, and it needs its own fine-mesh feeder or it pours straight through. An 850g bag lasts a long time.
If you are starting from nothing, a ready-filled feeder is the least faff — hang it up and you are feeding within a minute.
What not to put out
- Bread. It fills them up and feeds them almost nothing. A bird full of bread on a cold night is in trouble
- Milk. Birds cannot digest it
- Salted or dry-roasted peanuts, and nothing salted generally
- Fat from the roasting tin. Cooking fat is mixed with meat juices, it goes rancid and it smears on feathers. Proper suet is processed to avoid exactly that
- Anything gone mouldy. Some moulds that grow on old seed and peanuts are genuinely dangerous — throw it out rather than putting it at the back of the garden
The short version
- Water, broken free of ice twice a day. The single most useful thing you can do
- Fat, suet and sunflower hearts — energy is what winter is short of
- Feed first thing and again by mid-afternoon
- Be reliable — a small amount every day beats a lot now and then
- Wash the feeders every fortnight and move them about
- No nets, no bread, no salt
Not sure what suits your garden, or what the birds you actually get would use? Email us and we will tell you honestly, including when the cheap option is the right one.