Some mornings, I curl up in a blanket around my cup of coffee, and complain about how 67 degrees in the climate-controlled house feels so cooold...Until I look outside and see my flock of backyard birds enduring a blowing cold, snowy, 10 degree morning. Birds are tough—way tougher than me! Their adaptability never ceases to amaze me. But enduring cold weather is really apart of bird physiology; they were made to weather temperature extremes.
Birds keep warm in the winter through a number of physical adaptations and practices. For starters, they wear a coat of downy feathers. When they “puff” out their fine downy feathers, they are insulating themselves with air. They also eat—a lot! During the day, they have to build up their fat reserves so they can survive the long night ahead. Due to the unpredictable availability of food, many birds have caching practices that start in the fall, before it gets really cold. When they come across a surplus, they will hide away food for later on, in case they need it. Some birds aren’t as far-sighted, and only anticipate getting through the night. For these birds, like redpolls and crossbills, they will store food right in their crop, or throat pouch, and the food will keep their proverbial heater burning into the night. At night, when birds are most vulnerable, they employ a number of different tactics to keep warm. Some birds, like bluebirds, nuthatches, and chickadees, will huddle into nestboxes or tree cavities. Other birds like kinglets and finches will nestle together into communal roosts on evergreen boughs. And when huddling isn’t enough to keep warm at night, birds must resort to nocturnal hypothermia or even torpor. Both of these practices include turning the body’s basal temperature way down, and reducing metabolism drastically. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the many adaptations birds have to help them survive winter—it really is a topic of great fascination for me.
With that said, however, birds do have many factors working against them in winter. Studies have show that the birds that have the most difficult time surviving winter are birds on the margins of a range. These are the birds that can truly benefit form a little human intervention in winter time to make life a little bit easier. Here are some of the steps you can take to help your backyard birds survive the cold this winter:
Ways you can help your birds this winter
Offer Supplemental Wild Bird Food
The most obvious thing you can do to help birds survive winter weather is to offer them FOOD. In order to keep up their basal temperature (which is around 105 degrees F), birds must consume lots of calories and use less calories. In winter, especially when there is lots of snow cover, natural food sources like seed heads and seeds on the ground, become harder for birds to access. By offering food, you can make it easier for birds to eat enough calories to weather an excessively cold day. Here are some of the different foods you can offer your backyard birds:
Bird Seed
Offered in any kind of bird feeder, bird seed is a great way to make your backyard birds’ lives easier in winter. One of the least expensive and widely appreciated winter bird seeds to offer your birds is Black Oil Sunflower Seed. The big box stores sell 40-50 lb bags for less than $20. I find that many of the birds who cache, or hide away food for later, appreciate the black oil sunflower seeds because the protective shells help them store well until later.
Suet
Foods rich in fat, like suet and peanut butter, are also good options in winter. You can buy inexpensive suet-based blocks or cylinders for just a few dollars a piece, and offer them to your birds in a suet cage feeder. These blocks offer birds fat, which is very important to their winter survival, and they don’t need to be refilled as often as a seed feeder. Plus, some birds that will not visit a traditional seed feeder will visit a suet feeder. You can also offer the birds homemade foods that are high in fat and excellent for winter feeding. Here are links to two recipes I offer my birds come colder weather—Zick Dough and Pine Cone Bird Seed Feeders.
Fruit
One of the best, easiest foods you can offer your backyard birds is fruit, grown on trees and shrubs around your landscape. All you need to do is plant them, and the birds will come. We have grown a number of shrubs and trees that attract various birds. A couple that I really like are Junipers (red cedars) and Crabapples. Some people don’t like junipers, but they are perfect for birds. They offer evergreen winter color & cover for the birds, and the berries are popular amongst Cedar Waxwings, American Robins, Stellar’s Jays, and Townsend Solitaires. Crabapples provide literally four seasons of interest in the landscape, and many varieties that cling to their fruit into the fall and winter, like Profusion and Prairifire, are a hit amongst the same birds who love juniper berries, as well as chickadees, flickers, and bluebirds. Other great varieties to plant for birds include Serviceberries, Dogwoods, Viburnums, Chokecherries, Elderberries, Currants, and Bayberries.
Keep Bird Feeders Full
Birds have long nights to get through in winter, with it sometimes being dark for 12 hour stretches. One thing you can do to help them when they need it the most, is to ensure your feeders are full, especially in the morning, when they first wake up, and in the evening, before they tuck in for another long, cold night. Also, by keeping feeders full, you can keep your birds around. I find that, if the feeders are often left empty, then birds will go looking for a more dependable food source. This is one of the most common bird-feeding complaints I come across. Neighbors or co-workers will tell me that birds are never at their feeders. They will have some premium Wild Birds Unlimited seed mix they are offering, in a feeder way nicer than what I’ve got, and then it’ll come out that they let their feeder run out and don’t refill it for weeks at a time. If you don’t keep your feeders full, the birds will move on, especially in winter, when finding dependable food sources is so important for their survival.
Keep Bird Feeders Clean
Equally as important as keeping feeders well-stocked, is keeping them clean. I take my feeders down at least monthly, and hand wash them with hot water and Dawn dish soap. I allow them to dry completely before refilling them. If I see any sick birds, which normally doesn’t happen in the winter, I will take this a step further and soak the feeders in a dilute 1:10 bleach water solution, before rinsing and allowing them to dry completely. In addition to having clean feeders, you need to be offering clean food. Food should be stored in a cool, dry location, safe from bugs and rodents. If food gets wet, is growing mold or mildew, or has an unpleasant smell, it should be thrown away and replaced with fresh food. Also, if you have had food in your feeder for a few weeks and the birds are no longer showing interest in it, throw it out, clean the feeder, and offer them some fresh food. Often times, birds will not eat spoiled food and, if they aren’t around, that is a good indicator that the food has gone bad.
Offer Clean Water
Birds need water to survive in winter, just as much as they need food. They use water for both drinking and bathing. Clean, well-oiled & preened feathers can hold more air to keep the birds more insulated and warm in winter. And while they will not hop all the way in a bird bath on a freezing day, they will if the weather gets warm and sunny one afternoon. It is especially helpful to offer birds water in winter, because many natural water sources such as ponds and reservoirs freeze over in winter. Just as natural water sources ice up in winter, so do bird baths. To keep your bird bath free from ice you can put a De-Icer in it or get a Heated Bird Bath to begin with. I don’t use either of those, though—I simply have a Heated Dog Bowl on by back deck that I keep full of fresh, clean water. The bowl is deep, so I placed a big rock in it that is somewhat flat on top. Many small birds will not bathe in water that is more than and inch or so deep. I put the rock in the bowl to better accommodate my little songbirds. I picked up the heated dog bowl for less than $25 at the local feed store and it has done a good job of keeping the water free from ice. I have Blue Jays, Juncos, Doves, and Squirrels visit it regularly for drinks all winter long. Plus, with it being on my back deck, as opposed to out in the landscape somewhere, it is easy for me to keep clean and keep full of water.
Provide Winter Cover
Plant Trees, Shrubs, and Evergreens
Postpone Winter Cleanup
Provide a Brush Pile
Any of the above provides structure and shelter during inclement weather. By having a mix of evergreens, trees, shrubs, un-pruned perennial grasses, brush piles, and so forth, you have a mixture of habitats for your birds to use to seek shelter from wind, hunker down on cold nights, and hide from predators.
Leave up those Nest Boxes & Bird Houses
Like I mentioned earlier, some birds keep warm by taking shelter in tree cavities and nest boxes. I can’t remember where I heard it now, but bluebirds, in particular, have been known to pile into nestboxes on cold nights.
Put warm, comfy bedding material in your bird boxes
You can also take this a step further by placing a comfortable bedding material into your nest boxes and birdhouses in winter. If you line them with some wood shavings or straw, it further insulates them from the cold and provides the birds with a little bedding material to really nestle down into.
Keep Cats Indoors
This is really self-explanatory. Cats a major bird killers. If you keep your cats inside, then there is no chance for them to get your backyard birds.
And so, there you have it—actionable tips you can follow to help make this winter just a little less challenging on your backyard birds. Whether you follow just a few of these tips, or all of them, I appreciate you for doing your part to help our feathered friends this winter. Please comment below and let me know if there are any other measures you take to help your backyard birds winter just a little bit more easily.