The secret to attracting wildlife is to supply them with three basic requirements for survival: food, cover, and water. This post is one of three and will cover food.
Various trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers are good food sources, providing acorns, nuts, berries, buds, fruit, nectar, and seeds that can be used by a variety of wildlife. Choose a variety of different plantings to produce food throughout the year.
Deciduous plantings generally bear the most fruit, nuts, and seeds for wildlife and provide shady, leafy nest sites.
Evergreens bear leaves throughout the year and offer a good source of seed-filled cones and berries in addition to year-round shelter, protection, and breeding sites.
Take a look around your yard and see what you have. You may need to supplement with feeders if your yard is lacking the proper vegetation.
There are three main kinds of feeders: hanging, ground, and suet.
Hanging Feeders
Some hanging feeders are made for nectarivores such as hummingbirds, orioles, and some bats and can be filled with sugar water. Other hanging feeders hold seeds for seed-eating birds, titmice, and squirrels.
Sunflowers seeds may be the best to use instead of the mixed seeds since most birds prefer the easy-to-shell and high calorie black-oil sunflower seeds. Plus some critters will dig around and toss out the seeds they don’t want to get to the seeds they do want. That just make a mess and you’ll end up with an interesting crop underneath the feeder. It’s expensive too.
Since squirrels love to snack on the sunflower seeds, you can protect your feeder with a baffle–a dome-shaped cover placed above the feeder.
Put the nectar feeders out for hummingbirds especially during the migration times of March through May and August through early October. Since the nectar is popular with the little flying jewels, be sure to space several feeders around your yard to minimize fighting among the belligerent birds.
Ground Feeders
A ground table feeder is a simple system consisting of a tray with legs, usually raised several inches off of the ground like a small table. This keeps the seed from making direct contact with the ground and helps to keep it from becoming dirty or rotting as quickly and helps to dry out seed quicker after a rain. Most ground feeding tables have wire mesh or screened bottoms for drainage.
A ground feeder will often distract squirrels from other feeders when used along with hanging feeders. Cracked corn provides an inexpensive source of starch for large ground-feeding birds and squirrels. You can also supply the feeder with mixed seeds such as millet and peanut kernels, which will keep squirrels and most ground-feeding birds busy and happy.
Suet Feeders
A suet feeder dispenses suet (hard beef fat from the kidneys and loins) which is a good high energy food source during the winter months. Mary birds enjoy a suet feeder, and you will attract a variety of them to your feeder, especially woodpeckers such as the downy, ladder-backed, red-bellied, golden-fronted woodpeckers, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers.
Have fun and learn how to make your own suet feeder at How to Make a Suet Bird Feeder.
Or, visit the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife website to find some great ways to make your own feeders and food mixes.
Source: Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife.
