Birds

Food
Birdfeeder Menu

Type of Food

Birds Attracted

Black oil sunflower seed

Cardinals, blue jays, black-capped chickadees, house finches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, goldfinches, sparrows, mourning doves

Striped sunflower seed

Cardinals, blue jays, black-capped chickadees, house finches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, sparrows, mourning doves

Niger seed (sometimes called thistle seed)

Goldfinches, mourning doves, sparrows, house finches

Cracked corn

Cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, blackbirds, mourning doves, starlings, robins

Peanuts (in or out of the shell)

Woodpeckers, black-capped chickadees, blue jays, cardinals, tufted titmice, nuthatches

Suet

Woodpeckers, black-capped chickadees, flickers, tufted titmice, nuthatches

Fruit

Orioles, robins, starlings, woodpeckers, house finches, sparrows

Nectar

Hummingbirds, orioles
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Plants for Attracting Birds
to Backyard Habitats in Milton

Wildflowers                          

  • Beebalm                                 
  • Black-eyed susans            
  • Brown-eyed susans            
  • Purple coneflower                                                       

Vines                                     

  • Trumpet vine                         
  • Virginia creeper                                                        

Shrubs                                  

  • Bayberry                                
  • Low bush blueberry                    
  • High bush blueberry
  • Mountain laurel
  • Sweet fern
  • Sweet pepperbush
  • Redosier dogwood
  • Spicebush
  • Viburnums
  • Winterberry        

Trees        

  • American hornbeam
  • American mountain ash
  • Common witchhazel
  • Eastern red cedar
  • Oak
  • Paper birch
  • Quaking aspen
  • Sassafras
  • Serviceberry
  • Shadbush
  • Striped maple
  • White pine     
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Tips to Prevent Squirrels from Raiding Your Bird Feeders
  1. Run your feeder pole lengthwise through the center of a slinky. Attach the slinky to the top of the pole and let the rest of it hang. Squirrels will try to climb up the slinky, but will get dumped back down to the ground                
  2. Punch holes in the bottom of a few 2-liter juice bottles that are large enough to get around the post of your bird feeder. Hang the bottles lengthwise, securing them a few inches below the feeder with duct tape. The squirrels will slide right off. 
  3. Buy a clear plastic dome and place it directly above a hanging feeder. Squirrels planning a raid from the top of your feeder will slip right off—just make sure your feeder is high enough in the air to prevent ground assaults.
  4. Mount a feeder on top of a length of PVC pipe. Squirrels won’t get any traction when they try to climb it, and will slide off.
  5. Buy a hanging feeder surrounded by wire screen. Small birds will be able to enter and feed, but larger bully birds and squirrels will be excluded.
  6. Switch from sunflower seeds to safflower seeds (which don’t appeal to squirrels).
  7. String wire through the tops and bottoms of 2-liter plastic soda bottles, and hang bird feeders in between or in the middle. Squirrels walking the wire to get to the feeders will roll off when they step on the bottles.
  8. Distract squirrels away from birdfeeders by offering them dried corn cobs just for them. Impale the cobs lengthwise on spikes, then drive the spikes through a wooden board (so the cobs are perpendicular to the board). Attach the board to a tree limb or trunk where squirrels can reach the kernels.
  9. Buy a peanut feeder (they sell these at Ocean State Job Lot) and fill with peanuts in the shell. The woodpeckers and nuthatches will love it and the squirrels cannot raid it. (The holes in the feeder are too small for them to get into.)

 

Adapted from an article by George H. Harrison, National Wildlife Magazine, December/January 2001, pp. 16-17.

 
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