Treat The Birds To A Holiday Feast
When you're writing down your Holiday gift list, don't forget to include a large chunk of suet and several bags of seeds to feed the hungry birds that will gather round the tree branches in your backyard.
In fact, if you make the least effort, you can enjoy the cheerful companionship of birds outside your window all winter long. Consider buying one of those clear plastic see-through bird feeders which fasten to the window sill. Few birds feel safe if they are all alone at a feeder, but, they need room to take off swiftly without batting their wings against a neighbor. For this reason, the best feeders are big. If you have a feeder four feet long and almost a foot wide, a dozen evening Grosbeaks can eat at once, while others wait their turn in the trees.
Siskins, Sparrows, Juncos and Goldfinches prefer feeding on the ground, which is fine until snow comes. After that, you can feed inside a big cardboard box lying on its side, that will be free of snow and sheltered from the wind. Where rats are a problem, it's better to feed well off the ground.
The best feeder for those who want lots of action and who don't mind a somewhat unsightly  structure outside the window, is one made with a window screen for the floor and a storm window a foot or two above it for the roof, held up by four strong posts. Where snow isn't much of a problem you can simply use the screen.
Suet feeders are simpler. All you need is something to hold the suet out of reach of dogs. A mesh onion bag is as good as anything. There are dozens of tricky little suet feeders on the market, all of them fine for winter feeding if you don't mind the messy job of replenishing them every day or so, smearing peanut butter or suet into tiny holes. Coconut shells filled with suet are attractive and so are big pine cones. But, as more and more birds start coming, you'll want increasingly bigger feeders.
Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, Titmice and Chickadees seem to prefer a vertical feeder, but for Warblers, Bluebirds and most perching birds, you need a horizontal one. You could use a log supported horizontally between 30 foot posts, which revolves on metal pins. Gouged out holes an inch deep could hold suet. When Starlings are around, you can rotate the log so the holes are underneath, out of reach. As many as 15 Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers can use it at one time.
What to Feed? Kidney suet is probably the favorite of birds, but with so many people feeding birds today, most of us are content with any beef suet. A little meat mixed through it won't hurt. In fact, Chickadees prefer it now and then for variety's sake. Just make sure there's none of it in your feeder when warm weather comes. The fragrance gets pretty high. Stocking the suet feeder costs little or nothing. Feeding seed eaters is another matter.
The prime food is sunflower seeds. If you really want to play Santa Claus, crack the sunflower seeds. There's no easy way I know, but a rolling pin works. For coaxing birds to eat out of your hand, there's probably no better bait.
You can save considerably on sunflowers by buying the small-seeded kind, by the sack or in 100-lb. lots. Buy buckwheat if you can; it's almost as good and generally costs quite a bit less. Flax seed attracts some birds. Few seem to care about wheat or oats or barley. Corn, either whole,  cracked or on the cob, is popular with Jays, Titmice, Cardinals and Red-bellied Woodpeckers. Milleted sorghums are fine and inexpensive. Birds much prefer white to red millet according to a wholesaler of bird seed.
There are dozens of other foods that birds like. Dog biscuits pulverized with a rolling pin make a fine food. Nutmeats of any kind are good. Pumpkins, squash and cantaloupe seeds attract some birds. My window ledge feeder holds a smorgasbord of odds and ends. It's fun to see how birds vary their diet, given a choice. Sometimes there's a run on suet/peanut butter mix. Another time it might be cornbread leftovers. Most popular with a number of birds are doughnuts. String them on a wire, one above the other and suspend them from a branch to thwart squirrels. It's not long before only a thin white skeleton of the doughnut remains.
For most birds, winter and winter nights are critical. They must have full crops when night falls. A bird's metabolism is so rapid that many can barely keep alive overnight. Cardinals in Minneapolis, for instance, seem barely able to survive the long winter nights of the north. They are usually the last at the feeder in the evening and the first there in the morning.
Gourmet Fare to Lure Birds: Now for the feeding secrets -- the tricks that will lure your neighbor's birds to your yard. Peanut hearts, buckwheat and canary seed will do it. So will hemp seed (marijuana by another name) and only seed that has been sterilized to prevent germination can be legally sold. This means ordering it from a bird supply company. While you're ordering, get a sack of Niger thistle (it draws Goldfinches like a magnet). A secret ingredient of cage-bird feed is the seed of a member of the lowly cabbage and turnip family with the exotic name gold of pleasure. For generations, old hands at Canary breeding used it to gloss up plumage and promote singing. It does the same for wild birds. Goldfinches color up and sing. So do Redpolls and Cardinals. Little research has been done on the effect of this seed on wild birds, but there seem to be no harmful results.
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