For the Birds: Feed the birds and keep their roosting places

Chickadee using smaller snag
Photo by Doug Parrott

By Christine Southwick

Now is the time to be thinking about feeding wintering birds and helping them find dry places to rest and sleep at night.

Many of you have trees which had the tops blown off. SAVE THESE TREES—DON’T CUT THEM TO THE GROUND! You can safely save the bottom 15-30 feet and make Snags out of them. You may not think that these trees are good looking, but to our local wildlife, these broken/dead trees are Gold!

Pileated Woodpecker finding bugs on snag
Photo by John Riegsecker

They are what the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife call “Wildlife Trees”. Snags provide roosting and sleeping places for our woodpeckers (We have five in our area: Downy, Hairy, Pileated Woodpeckers, Northern Flicker, and Red-breasted Sapsucker). Additionally, our Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches will hunker down in snag cavities during wet and windy weather. In the spring these same snags will offer nesting sites for cavity nesting birds, owls, squirrels, and raccoons to name some of the wildlife you will be helping.

Black-oil sunflower seeds provide some of the best energy-per-pound and attract the most species of birds.

I buy the unshelled for use in the back feeders, and I buy a more expensive shelled no-mess blend for my front feeder (“Patio Mix” at Audubon is my choice). Some people offer peanuts in the shell, but squirrels will take and plant peanuts in all sorts of places, including yards of neighbors who want nothing to do with peanuts (or squirrels for that matter). I also do not serve Niger seed — it molds quickly and is too expensive in our damp climate. I offer suet year round. Suet “dough” goes uneaten at my feeders, so I only use pre-packaged suet.

Feeder set-up with baffle
Photo by Christine Southwick

I have two hummingbird feeders that I fill year round—I make my own nectar—1/4 cup of sugar (sugar cane only—those little devils won’t drink nectar made with beet sugar) to 1 cup of water—no dye required. When temperatures start freezing, I wrap non-LED Christmas lights, red of course, around the feeder near my kitchen window. I hang the back feeder next to a 75w light under the eaves.

Spotted Towhee using water with bird bath heater
Photo by Christine Southwick

Offer clean water all year long, and keep it from freezing with a bird bath heater that comes on automatically at 35 degrees and below. Our local Wild Birds Unlimited in Lake Forest Park Center is one of the places that carries them.