Change Up the Bird Foods You Offer to Match the Season

Migration, food preferences and weather vary continuously throughout the year, and these influence the bird activity at your feeders. Being “seasonally savvy” means you adjust your feeding program to match birds' changing behaviors. Learn to embrace seasonal changes, and you will attract more birds and experience even more fun!

For a Seasonally Savvy Bird Feeding Station:

• Keep your Foundational Feeder and Fat Feeder active and well maintained all year.
• When bird activity is greater or extreme weather arrives, expand the number of foods and feeders you offer.
• Change the types of feeders and food as migrating birds arrive, when fledglings begin to show up or as the seasonal habitats change:
• When Dark-eyed Juncos arrive in the fall, alter your feeding program to include more millet in a feeder near the ground.
• Add sunflower seeds (in the shell) to your food mix each fall to cater to the caching behavior of chickadees, titmice and nuthatches.
• Add a water feature to attract migrating warblers and offer Jim's Birdacious® Bark Butter® nearby.
• Orioles and hummingbirds – offer nectar feeders a week or two before their normal arrival dates. Offer fruit, jelly and mealworms for orioles, too.
• Add calcium enriched foods during nesting season.