Foraging is tough business with snow on the ground, which is why our wintertime bird visitors benefit from high-energy food options.
Even during subzero conditions, birds have special ways of keeping warm. Some fliers, such as finches and chickadees, pack on as much as 10% body fat from eating berries and insects in fall to build up their winter stores.
But many visitors appreciate an extra food boost. Plan ahead to keep your backyard birds fed when the weather turns cool.
Top-Tier Seeds
“When the weather is colder, the birds appreciate those fatty seeds, says Emma Greig, project leader for Project FeederWatch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She notes that fat is critical to meet birds' caloric needs.
“An easy bird feed is black oil sunflower seeds,” Emma says. The seed is popular with most birds that winter in the northern regions and is typically easy to find in feed stores or even grocery stores.
This story is from the December 2021/January 2022 edition of Birds & Blooms.
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This story is from the December 2021/January 2022 edition of Birds & Blooms.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Sense or Nonsense? - Why some birds can taste and smell - but others can't
Does a porcelain berry taste like a blueberry to a gray catbird? Does a block of lard smell like frying bacon to a northern flicker? The short answer is no. While some avian species do have a well-adapted sense of taste or smell, they can't distinguish between flavors and odors the way humans can. They're not picking up every ingredient in the suet you put out, says José Ramírez-Garofalo, an ornithology researcher at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the director of Freshkills Biological Station in Staten Island, New York.
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Even if you haven't heard of Canada jays, you've heard of their relatives. Members of the corvid family, they belong to the same group as American crows, blackbilled magpies, and jays including blue, Steller's and scrub. "Unlike many of the other jays, a Canada jay doesn't have a crest of any kind; it just has a rounded head," says Dale Gentry, director of conservation for Audubon Upper Mississippi River.In 2018, the Canada jay's name was changed from gray jay, but Dale thinks the former adjective was fitting. "Most of its body is shades of gray with some white," he says. "There are different subspecies that have different physical traits, but most of them have some lighter coloring on their foreheads, upper breasts and throats, each with a darker streak that starts at each eye and goes back."
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