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What can and cannot be fed to birds. What can and what not to feed the birds in the feeder in winter. We make a bird feeder

This is how autumn ended. Only faded, dry leaves, translucent through the ice crust, are reminiscent of the recently noisy leaf fall. It seems that summer warmth, greenery and abundance are a thing of the distant past.

But life does not stop in this dark and cold season, it just becomes much more difficult and costly to maintain it.

Why is it important to feed birds?

It's hard for the birds, winter does not spare them - snowfalls, winds, frosts, hunger ... The daylight hours are short, and you need to find so much food to provide yourself with the necessary energy and meet the next morning warm and alive.

But it is in our power to help the birds survive the long winter - it is enough to competently organize regular and varied feeding for them. So!

How to properly feed the birds

1 The more varied the range of food you offer, the more bird species may be interested in your feeder.

2 Start feeding, make it regular and constant. Birds will quickly get used to a guaranteed resource and will rely on it.

3 Regularly clean the feeder of food residues. Remember, rotten, dried, moldy food is a favorable environment for the development of fungi and bacteria, which can be a source of bird diseases!

4 Do not give the birds harmful and stale foods! The principle “yes, they eat everything in nature” is fundamentally wrong. Urban environments, where landfills are often the only available source of food for birds, are far from the image of an ideal habitat for animals. Indeed, from hunger, birds can even eat those foods that they would normally refuse: pigeons fish out the remains of hot dogs with mayonnaise from garbage cans, sparrows peck at burnt pasta, etc. Such food allows birds to survive, but does no less harm than good - diseases of the digestive system, metabolic disorders and, as a result, a catastrophic decrease in life expectancy. But it's so easy to feed the birds with complete and healthy food!

what can you feed the birds

1 Sunflower seeds- this is, without a doubt, one of the complete and energetically beneficial food for all granivorous and omnivorous birds! Sparrows, different types of tits (great tit, blue tit, chickadees, etc.), greenfinches, oatmeal, carduelis, siskin and even nuthatch will fly to sunflower seeds! Some birds (for example, bullfinches) may find it difficult to crack hard sunflower seeds with their beaks, they can be helped by adding peeled seeds to the feeder, or by first crushing some of the seeds. The main thing to remember is that all seeds must be unsalted and unroasted, otherwise your treat will do more harm to the birds than good.

2 Millet- it can be bought both in its pure form and as part of feed for canaries and small parrots. Millet will be happy to be eaten by small granivorous birds - sparrows, goldfinches, siskins, buntings, tap dances, etc. As an additional feed, along with millet, oats and millet can also be given to birds.

3 wild grass seeds- if you plan in advance the winter feeding of birds, then in the fall you can prepare for them seeds of burdock, quinoa, nettle, thistle, hemp, etc.

4 Melon, pumpkin, watermelon seeds- harvested from the summer, they will be a good treat for insectivorous and omnivorous birds, for example, tits. Previously, all seeds must be thoroughly cleaned of pulp, rinsed with running water to get rid of the sweet juice, and dried. It is best to store such food in a well-ventilated rag bag so that the seeds do not get moldy.

5 Rowan, hawthorn, viburnum, wild rose- all these juicy fruits can be harvested during autumn walks in the forest and stored until winter in dried or frozen form. Bullfinches will happily eat the seeds of berries, and waxwings and blackbirds will fly in to feast on the juicy pulp. These foods become especially relevant at the end of winter, when all the fruits on trees and shrubs have long been eaten. Fresh apples cut into feeders can also be a delicacy for birds.

6 Peanuts and nuts(almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts) - unroasted and unsalted, chopped and shelled, these foods will attract tits, sparrows, tap dances to your feeder,

siskin, etc.

7 Animal fats(lard) is a good source of energy for insectivorous and omnivorous birds in the most severe frosts: nuthatches, tits and even woodpeckers will fly in to taste a high-calorie treat. Hang a piece of lard on a branch near the feeder so that the seed husks do not clog it. And remember - the fat should be fresh, without salt and spices.

8 White bread. Although many people prefer to feed birds with this particular product, we remind you that bread is completely unsuitable for the role of the main and, moreover, complete food for birds. It can only be an addition to the main feeding. At the same time, it is not recommended to feed the birds with fresh, soft white bread, it should be slightly dried, cut into pieces or crumbled.

9 Acorns, pine and spruce cones, "lionfish" ash and maple - all these additional treats can also be prepared for winter feeding in advance, from autumn. Cone seeds will be eaten by woodpeckers, acorns will fly to dine with jays, and bullfinches will fly with ash and maple seeds.

10 Mineral calcium bird feed purchased at a pet store will replenish the winter diet of birds with the necessary macro- and microelements.

11 Barley, compound feed- a good top dressing for larger birds - pigeons or ducks, which remained to winter in the city on non-freezing reservoirs.

12 If you are a happy resident of the forest zone, and visit the habitats capercaillie, hazel grouse and black grouse, then you can help these birds successfully winter. To digest hard winter foods (needles, birch buds, etc.), they need gastroliths - small pebbles that help mechanically grind food in the stomach. But the fact is that snowfalls make gastroliths inaccessible to birds. You can help by scattering small river pebbles in areas that the local ranger will advise you.

NEVER give to birds

1 I'm eating from your table;

2 Fried, sweet, salty, smoked, processed with spices;

3 Stale products - expired industrial poultry feed, spoiled grains, moldy bread, rotten berries and fruits, etc.

4 Rye bread.

Feed the birds when they need it the most and you'll have many interesting sightings and amazing encounters!

Birds that live in both cities and villages are very useful for natural balance. Birds destroy small flying insects that harm absolutely the entire plant. And if these same insects are food for birds in summer, then in winter many birds die due to cold and hunger. You are unlikely to be able to save birds from the cold, but it is easy to save them from hunger.

What can you feed the birds in winter?

The list of suitable bird feeds is quite large:

Sunflower seeds, but not roasted or salted.
Small pumpkin seeds, also raw and without salt.
Shop pearl barley.
Oats.
Millet.
Wheat.
Raw flakes "Hercules", but only those that are intended for cooking, not for steaming.
Dry crumbs of white bread.
Crushed raw peanuts.

For bird food, you can mix all these ingredients and pour the already prepared mixture into the feeder. The amount of cereals, seeds and crumbs in the mixture can be completely different - how many you find in your bins. Least of all in the feed should be bread crumbs - they can be given to birds only if there is no other food in the house. If there is only one cereal or one type of seeds in the house, then give the birds only those.

Very severe frosts will help the birds survive such products;

Not salted butter.
Salo is fresh and without salt.

First freeze these two foods, and then tie them with a strong thread or place the pieces in a mesh with small cells. Hang this frozen delicacy on a tree.

Mixed bird food

An excellent option for winter feeding of birds will be frozen balls of pork fat interspersed with seeds and cereals. How to make such balls.:

Hold pork fat without salt in a warm kitchen so that it becomes plastic.
Put the fat from the jar into a bowl and pour the mixture of cereals and seeds into it. Mix everything thoroughly. The mass should be quite thick so that you can make balls out of it.
Form into balls with your hands or fill small silicone cupcake liners with the mixture.
Place the blanks in the freezer for the balls to harden.
Tie the finished balls with strong threads on all sides and hang them on tree branches.

Balls of fat with seeds and cereals will be happy to eat titmouse, sparrows, woodpeckers, nuthatches. Pigeons do not eat food that is at a height. They peck it from the ground, so pour the grain mixture and dry white bread crumbs directly onto the ground for these birds.

What absolutely can not feed the birds?

Never feed your birds the following foods:

Fresh white pastries. Soft white bread swells greatly in the stomach and the bird may die.
Millet. It causes severe swelling.
Rye bread. It causes fermentation in the belly of birds.
Chips, salted nuts, salted bacon - salt is detrimental to birds.
Fried pies, belyashi and similar pastries. Yeast dough in combination with oil leads to the death of birds.

How to arrange a place for feeding birds?

Hang feeders only on trees. Arranged near the windows on the windowsills, they can scare away the birds by the proximity of people.
The hanging height of the feeder is approximately 1.5 m. At this height it is easy to fill the feeder.
Place feeders not in the thick of branches, but along the edge of the crown. Birds should be provided with a free approach to the feeding place.
Hang balls of fat with seeds and cereals on the very tips of thin twigs so that cats cannot get close to them.
Pour fresh food into the feeder once a day - you should not completely take on the allowance of birds. They need to be active in order to stay warm, so finding food outside of the feeder will do them good. In a very harsh and snowy winter, you can feed the birds 2 times a day, but only on the worst weather days.

If you have bullfinches or waxwings in your garden or in a nearby park, you can prepare dried apples or pears for them. Hang the slices by thread on the trees and the birds will peck them with pleasure.

In winter, birds especially need human support, but you need to know who and how best to feed, so as not to harm the birds.

Little food is found by birds in winter, insects in hibernation, fruits and berries under the snow. From morning to evening, the birds are looking for crumbs of food. Downy, warm feathers protect from the cold, but not from hunger. During snowfalls, blizzards and severe frosts, birds starve and die en masse. More than 10 species of birds winter in Moscow and the Moscow Region: chickadees, great tits, nuthatches, blue tit, spotted woodpeckers, siskins, bullfinches, magpies, mallard ducks, gulls, sparrows, pigeons and crows.

People strive to help our feathered neighbors survive this difficult period for them, arrange feeding grounds and feeders. But everything must be approached with skill, because by feeding the birds incorrectly, it is easy to harm them out of good intentions.

You need to know that the feeding of birds depends on their belonging to a particular group. There are birds whose diet is completely dependent on humans, there are those that can feed themselves, but will gladly accept human help, and there are groups whose feeding is highly undesirable, etc.

GROUPS OF BIRDS

1. Completely dependent on a person

This group includes sedentary synanthropes: city pigeons, sparrows and mallard ducks. These birds adhere to a certain small territory and do not move beyond it.

Pigeons and sparrows do not live in the middle lane in their natural environment, they are residents of subtropical regions. To the north they came after man, and if in summer they find enough food in nature, then in winter they are completely dependent on us. Ducks, being the aborigines of our region, refused exhausting flights, becoming sedentary. These three species of birds will not be able to exist without human help, the amount of natural food that they are able to find in nature is so small that it will not allow them to survive the winter.

2. They can survive the winter without our help, but they will not refuse if we offer

This group includes small forest birds that regularly winter in the middle lane and are quite adapted to this: tits, nuthatches, woodpeckers, greenfinches, jays.

3. Most often they forage on their own

This group includes bullfinches, fieldfare thrushes, waxwings, goldfinches, buntings, siskins and tap dances, pikas and kinglets. These birds are true nomads, never stopping anywhere for a long time.

Thrushes and waxwings in winter feed exclusively on soft fruits of trees and shrubs - mountain ash, hawthorn, svidina and even snowberry. They do not visit feeders, completely depending on the presence of berries on the branches (by picking off the fruits of mountain ash, we thereby reduce the amount of food available to them, so it is better not to harvest mountain ash for winter feeding. Those who feed on mountain ash are more likely to find it on a tree than in the feeder).

Bullfinches feed on the seeds of mountain ash, ash, lilac. They occasionally visit the feeders, eating seeds with pleasure, but due to their nomadic lifestyle, they never stay at the feeders for a long time.

Goldfinches, buntings, siskins and tap-dancing birds feed on weed seeds and feed on birch trees. You will hardly see them on the feeders in the city. For them, you can arrange feeding grounds in wastelands and outside the city, but this is a difficult matter.

The pika and kinglet are strictly insectivorous birds and survive the winter looking for hibernating insects under the bark or among the needles of spruce.

4. Top dressing is highly undesirable

The last group includes the gray crow and magpie. It is better not to feed these birds. This is especially true of crows, whose numbers in cities exceed all reasonable limits.

The gray crow is omnivorous, its diet includes both plant foods and animals. At the same time, the city gives crows protection from natural predators; here they raise their chicks more successfully, rapidly increasing in number. This, in turn, becomes a problem for other animal species. They more carefully comb green spaces in search of food, ruining all the nests of small birds that they meet, steal ducklings, and even squirrels. And the better the crows winter, the more food they find in winter, the more eggs their females lay in the spring, the more chicks they feed, the more nests of other birds they destroy, the more chicks they find and eat. Feeding crows, you increase their number and, accordingly, reduce the number of other birds - warblers, nightingales, warblers, finches, greenfinches. Some species of birds cannot nest in the city at all because of crows.

A certain area of \u200b\u200bthe terrain can feed only a limited number of animals. And only the strongest and fittest survive the winter, this is natural selection. By feeding animals in winter, we allow the weak to survive, who will also leave offspring in the spring. But besides this, in spring the number of animals of one species will be higher, there will be competition for nesting places and food, and not only weak individuals will not be able to fully feed their offspring, but those who would survive the winter without our help find themselves in a difficult situation. This also applies to settled birds. By feeding urban pigeons, we maintain their high numbers, and the health of birds as a whole is noticeably deteriorating, which leads to annual epidemics.

If you do not feed the city ducks, most of them will not survive until spring, but the species as a whole will not suffer, since migratory ducks will retain their numbers. And the increase in the urban population is already having a negative effect on our ponds - ducks completely eat away many types of aquatic and near-water vegetation, exposing the shores, eating most aquatic invertebrates and tadpoles.

So to feed the birds or not - everyone decides for himself.

BASIC FEEDING RULES

You can't feed the birds, you can only feed them!

This is especially true for species from the second group. When feeding, the birds receive the entire daily ration only from the feeder, and when feeding, they receive only part of the necessary food from humans, and are forced to find the rest of their diet in nature. In nature, the diet of birds is very diverse. Moving through the forest, flocks of tits check cracks in the bark in search of wintering insects, their larvae and pupae, pick up seeds of various plants, and eat only seeds and fat at the feeder. And with the constant presence of seeds in the feeder, tits simply stop looking for other food. A monotonous diet, and even rich in fats, leads to liver disease. The birds themselves do not understand the dangers of one-sided feeding, and even if there is a choice of different feeds in the feeder, they prefer to eat only seeds, as the most nutritious type of food. An excess of fat leads to liver disease and the imminent death of the bird. It turns out that instead of benefit, we can cause irreparable harm to birds.

An observant person will notice that about a month after the start of feeding the tits, birds with very fluffy plumage will begin to fly to the feeders, the tits look like fluffy balls. Often these birds are more trusting, they are not afraid of a person, they often drive other, more "slim" ones away from the feeder. To people far from biology, they seem stronger, thicker. But an experienced person will immediately say that these birds do not feel well. It is because of poor health that they fluff the feather, trying to keep as much heat as possible, losing their natural caution.

Feed should not be in the feeder all the time

It is better to accustom yourself and the birds to a certain regime, filling the feeders once or twice a day, in the morning or in the morning and in the evening at the same time. They poured a glass of seeds, tits pulled them away and that's it. No matter how they beg you, banging their beaks on the glass, you need to be persistent and not give in to your feelings. In general, the mode is a very valuable thing. If you strictly adhere to it, then the birds quickly get used to the fact that at a certain time they can expect to find food in the feeder, and the rest of the time they will go to look for food in other places.

WHAT TO FEED

It is forbidden

We must immediately understand for ourselves that some products for birds are harmful, and often deadly. At the same time, the birds themselves do not understand this and eat them, harming their health.

In no case should birds be given: fried and salted seeds, salted bacon, millet, black bread and spoiled foods with an unpleasant odor or mold.

Can

Pigeons: a specially prepared mixture or wheat, or rather barley, which can be bought at the Bird Market (grain is also cheaper than cereals). Of the cereals, pearl barley is best. White bread / in small quantities /, oatmeal, but not instant, but dense, not loose. In a small amount, you can add unroasted seeds.

Sparrows: barley is too hard, but everything else that pigeons eat is fine for them too. From grain, sparrows prefer millet.

Ducks: it is best to feed with grain (grain mixture or wheat) or compound feed for chickens, but these types of feed sink in water, and to feed them you have to either pour them on ice or make special feeders semi-submerged in water, which is unrealistic in an urban reservoir. So there are practically no alternatives to white bread. Eat ducks and unroasted seeds that do not sink in water, unlike other types of grain. However, ducks get so used to bread that they eat seeds less willingly.

Tits: unroasted sunflower seeds, medium-fat cottage cheese mixed with white breadcrumbs so that the cottage cheese does not stick together, but is grains, scraped lean beef, grated hard-boiled egg, finely chopped fresh apple. On frosty days, it is good to hang a piece of unsalted bacon, put a piece of butter. It is only necessary to take into account that, in addition to seeds, tits should get used to other foods, so do not be upset if they do not eat them at first.

In addition to birds, some other animals visit the feeders, most often we meet squirrels on the feeders.

Squirrels are fed whole hazelnuts (hazelnuts), whole pine nuts, chopped walnuts, whole apricot pits, sunflower seeds (also not fried), pieces of sweet crackers, cookies, bagels, slices of fresh apple (even in frost, a fresh apple is used by squirrels in demand, despite the fact that it freezes through), dried fruits, dried mushrooms, boiled eggs, cottage cheese. Squirrels do not eat almonds, raw peanuts are also not popular, but you can offer them.

Salt is not harmful for squirrels, but it is better not to use salty foods, as they can be eaten by birds, for which salt is dangerous. It is very good to fix a white bird stone (pressed chalk) on the feeder for squirrels - squirrels in nature are always deficient in calcium and they will certainly be happy with such a gift.

WHERE IS BETTER TO PLACE FEEDERS

It is best to feed the birds away from housing, choosing a site with convenient perches (pigeons sometimes sit all day near the feeding area, waiting for freebies, they simply have nothing else to do) and shelters. The concentration of birds at the feeders will inevitably attract predators, and if there is no place to hide nearby, your wards may be in danger. For small birds, it is better to arrange feeding grounds near a dense bush or on the edge of a coniferous forest. It must also be remembered that the wind is very dangerous for birds, so the feeders should be located in places protected from it.

Of course, the feeder outside the window is very attractive to us, but not very useful for the birds and does not please the neighbors at all. The feeder is always a source of garbage - the seeds are shelled, the birds heavily litter the space, and if the tits pull the seeds to the sides, then the sparrows shell the grain on the spot. Often, in search of food, birds begin to fly into open windows, which often ends in death for them, often the birds break on the glass. In addition, bird droppings do not decorate our window sills, cornices and balconies, as well as parked cars. This, first of all, of course, concerns pigeons.

MANUFACTURE OF THE FEEDER

When making feeders of any design, it is important to remember the main rules:

1. The feeder must have a roof, otherwise the food may be covered with snow or rain and become unsuitable for birds.

2. The hole in the feeder should be wide enough for the bird to easily enter and leave the feeder.

The simplest feeders can be made from plastic bottles or juice or milk bags. It is necessary, stepping back 5 cm from the bottom, cut out wide windows, pour food on the bottom and hang it by a rope or wire it to the trunk. You can make edible balls: soak white bread in water. Let it soak properly, then wring it out. Add the seeds and cereals that you have and mix the resulting dough. Fold the pieces of rope in half and tie in a knot. Now take some dough, put the rope inside and make a ball. Dry the resulting product in the oven. Hearts and stars are even easier to make. Cut out the desired shape from cardboard, spread with a thick layer of flour paste and sprinkle with feed mixture. Dry the resulting halves in the oven. Then glue the halves by inserting a rope between them.

Here are a few diagrams of the simplest feeders that can be quickly and easily made at home:

1. Feeder made of two plastic boxes of instant noodles, connected by pieces of plywood.

2. A feeder from an empty juice or milk bag. Two or three holes are cut in the bottom of the bag. They can be either round or rectangular.

3. Pieces of unsalted lard tied together with strong thread or twine. This bunch can be thrown on the branches of a tree, where tits will find it, but the food will be difficult for crows.

4. A feeder of two empty plastic bottles of different sizes. This feeder can work automatically. As the birds eat the food, it spills out of the bottle again. Millet, oats, wheat and other loose feed can be poured into such a feeder.

On the diagram, the numbers indicate:

1 - cap made from a larger bottle

2 - the feed container is made from a bottle of a smaller volume. The bottom is cut off to make it easier to fill the food, and holes are made at the neck, from which the food enters the cup.

3 - stick perch for birds

4 - food in a cup

5 - belt for fastening the feeder on a branch.

5. Feeder from an empty plastic bottle. The neck of the bottle is partially cut off so that a small roof remains. A piece of a plank with a perch for birds is inserted into the resulting hole, and food is poured inside the bottle.

If you have started feeding birds, try not to give up this activity until spring, as birds arriving at the feeder can be very upset and even die if you suddenly stop coming.

And finally - there is such a sign: if a titmouse sits on your hand, make a wish and if the bird gives a voice, the wish will come true.

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The article will tell you how to properly prepare food for wintering birds in the feeders.

A person often feels a desire to take care of "our smaller brothers." If you can't afford to volunteer at animal shelters or donate money to voluntary animal welfare organizations every month, then you can feed the local birds during the winter season. By creating a feeder in your yard or on your balcony, you not only give food to small feathered creatures, you give them a chance to survive, extending their lives for several days, weeks, and a harsh winter.

Of course, you should not expect gratitude from small creatures, they will help you at another time - in the summer, when they start eating harmful insects (mosquitoes, larvae, flies, ants, aphids and worms), which prevent you from growing decent crops. Yes, and you must admit that feeding the birds will not hit your pocketbook, but will bring a pleasant feeling of accomplishment.

IMPORTANT: If you decide to feed the birds in the winter season, when it is difficult for them to find food for themselves, it is important to know that their diet in winter is significantly different from summer. Birds need high-calorie food, but not harmful (otherwise you will simply kill them).

What can you feed:

Food:	Peculiarities:	Who eats:
Sunflower (seeds)	Seeds should make up almost 70-75% of the total feed (they are nutritious and high in calories, they are high in fat)	Tits, woodpeckers, sparrows, nuthatches and other granivorous birds
Millet
Millet	Dry food (often sold as pet parrot food in pet stores)	Sparrows, carduelis, pigeons, greenfinches and other granivorous
oats	Raw or boiled cereals (without spices and oil)	Sparrows, carduelis, pigeons, greenfinches and other granivorous
Wheat	Raw or boiled cereals (without spices and oil)	Sparrows, carduelis, pigeons, greenfinches and other granivorous
Rice	Raw or boiled cereals (without spices and oil)	Sparrows, carduelis, pigeons, greenfinches and other granivorous
Meat	Pieces of raw or dried meat, finely crushed. Without any salt and spices!
Salo	Raw lard without salt! It can be strung on a thread and hung	Tits, nuthatches and other species (crows, jackdaws and magpies may arrive)
Beef fat or chicken	It can be mixed with bread or put separately in the feeder. Fat should not be salty!	Tits, nuthatches and other species (crows, jackdaws and magpies may arrive)
Dried rowan (viburnum, hawthorn)	Berries should be prepared in advance and dried in the fall. They can be put in a feeder or hung with beads.	Bullfinches, waxwings
Maple seeds (lionfish)	They should be collected in the fall when they are sprinkled from the trees. In winter, such food is often inaccessible to birds, as it is covered with leaves. Mud and snow	Bullfinches, waxwings
cones	From various types of coniferous trees, should be collected in the fall	Woodpeckers, crossbills
nuts	Any fresh nuts that are not salted (as store-bought peanuts are) or roasted	Jay woodpeckers and other species
acorns	Gathering in autumn	Jays
Corn	Dried
Grains of watermelon and melon	Good source of fats and nutrients (harvested from summer, dried)	Bullfinches, jays, woodpeckers
Pumpkin seeds	Good source of fats and nutrients (harvested in autumn)	All granivorous bird species
Chicken egg shell	Serves as a good calcium supplement (you can put a piece of natural chalk in the feeder)	For all kinds of birds

What not to feed the birds in the winter in the feeder: a list of products

What you need to know about unhealthy food for birds:

Of course, in winter, birds need fatty foods such as meat and lard. but in no case should it be salty foods, since such food can kill small creatures, provoking dehydration and intoxication in the excretory organs.
Meat, lard and fat should be given neat., you can mix these ingredients with other food (grains, boiled cereals or bread).
You can not give black bread - this product, prepared with rye flour, can cause upset and diarrhea in birds, which will lead to their death. There is a lot of salt in black bread, and it also leads to disruption of the kidneys and liver in birds.
Rye bread can ferment in the goiter of birds and kill them, since there is much more yeast in it than in wheat.

What can not be added to the feeder:

salty foods
fried food
spicy food
acidic foods
Citrus fruits (even the peel)
Peel and fruits of bananas
Milk
roasted nuts
Spicy products

Why can't you feed the birds with salted bacon, fried seeds?

Any disease that affects a bird in the winter season becomes much more dangerous for it than it would be in summer. Gastrointestinal diseases in birds happen quite often, as in harsh winters they can eat junk food in search of survival. This food is offered to them by a person who knows little about the peculiarities of animal nutrition.

INTERESTING: It turns out that chewing gum thrown by a person is often perceived by birds as a piece of bread. They peck it, but after that they die, as the chewing gum completely slows down and clogs their digestive tract.

When offering titmouse and other birds with lard, make sure you cut it out of the non-salted part. Salt is poison for birds. Their kidneys and liver cannot digest and excrete it, and therefore such a product will be certain death for a small creature.

It would seem that sunflower seeds are the most useful food for birds. But only if the seeds are raw. Roasted seeds absorb too much fat and the gastrointestinal tract of birds cannot absorb it, causing poisoning, diarrhea and indigestion, which is very detrimental to most species.

What birds fly to the feeder in winter, and what bird will not appear at the feeder in winter?

When installing a feeder, you should be aware that it is always a source of debris. Therefore, there is no place for feeders on windowsills and balconies of houses (your neighbors may complain). It is best to install it on trees at a height where they will not be available to children who want to misbehave and knock it down (or add junk food).

It is possible that along with the "good-natured" birds, you will be able to notice the "arrogant" thieves like crows, pigeons, magpies and jackdaws. However, most often they still eat in the feeders:

sparrows
Bullfinches
titmouse
Nuthatch
Jays
Goldfinch
Crossbill
pika
waxwing

What is the best way to feed sparrows, titmice, bullfinches, woodpeckers, waxwings in the winter in the feeder?

If you can afford to buy bird food, then periodically do it in a pet store. There you can easily pick up food from a mixture of millet, oats, wheat and sunflower seeds. This food can be combined with dried rowan berries, slices of white bread (or breadcrumbs), animal fat and lard.

IMPORTANT: The feeder should be updated as the food is eaten. Do not pour too much food at once, because the birds very often empty themselves right during the meal and this spoils some of the food.

What birds eat mountain ash in winter?

The bright red rowan berries often attract birds. These berries, dried by a person and sprinkled in a feeder or left hanging on a tree, serve as food for:

Ryabinnikov
Drozdov
bullfinch
Waxwings

What cereal can be given to birds in the winter in the feeder? Is it possible to feed birds in the winter in the feeder with millet, corn, wheat, pearl barley, barley groats, buckwheat, oats, oatmeal, rice, oatmeal?

Groats are a satisfying, nutritious and healthy food for all granivorous birds. It can be sprinkled in raw and dry form, boiled, brought to half-cooked. It is important not to add salt to porridge during cooking, not to add sugar and spices, not to pour in oil (the exception is a small amount of natural animal fat: beef or chicken).

What cereal can be given to wintering birds:

Buckwheat
Millet
Oatmeal (hercules, cereal)
Perlovka
corn
Wheat

Is it possible to feed birds in the winter feeder with pumpkin, watermelon, sunflower seeds?

Saving melon seeds from summer is far from difficult when you eat watermelons, melons and pumpkins. To do this, they should be washed well with running water and dried in the sun from moisture. Such seeds are an excellent nutritious and healthy food for all wintering birds, because they contain dietary fiber and oils. It is easily digested and gives the birds a boost of energy for the winter.

Is it possible to feed birds in the winter in the feeder with crackers, bread, fresh lard?

As already mentioned, bread is not ideal food for birds, but acceptable. However, we are talking only about white and unleavened bread. It should be dried or crushed. It is also allowed to add white bread crackers to the feeder, hanging them on dense threads.

IMPORTANT: If you put pieces of raw, non-salted fat and meat in the feeders, it is also recommended to string them with beads so that the birds do not lose this food, do not drop it from the feeder, do not try to swallow whole, but pinch off piece by piece.

Video: "Wintering Birds"

Introduction.
Hungry bird.
Feeding experiences.
Winter top dressing (K. Razhaisky's advice)
How to make a feeder.
About the birds.
Feed the birds!

In the West, they argue about whether or not it is necessary to feed birds in winter? But we don’t need to argue: when the night temperature drops to -10 ° C and below, titmouse lose up to 10% of their own weight overnight! To maintain body temperature (and she has about 40 ° C) and survive, they need food from the very early morning. But it happens that you can’t get to it - natural feeding places are either covered with snowdrifts or covered with an impenetrable ice crust. And only people can help them.

In the second half of winter, when most of the winter berries and fruits are eaten or gone, additional feeding is especially important for the survival of birds. In severe winters, feeding with special fatty, high-calorie food helps many birds survive.

Birds need to be fed in winter. We have known about this since childhood, but we can’t even imagine how many birds die of starvation in winter. In a snowy and frosty winter, they are doomed.

Hungry bird.

Ornithologists give the following data: out of every ten titmouse, nine die. Mainly from hunger. The bird's thermoregulation system is designed in such a way that if there is no food, then it does not function well. Therefore, many birds die on frosty nights, when the tiny body is unable to keep warm and freezes. A well-fed bird keeps warm until morning. She spends the night, fluffed up, and at dawn she goes in search of food. A lot of energy is spent on an active life, and only food that needs to be found under the snow and ice in a short winter day can make up for it. That is why migratory birds go south. They are very risky, making long-distance flights. Nomadic birds also often winter where it is easier to survive. Sedentary birds stay for the winter in their nesting places. If they find a feeder that always has food, then the bird has a real chance of surviving until spring.

Feeding experiences.

In our area, more than a dozen species of birds visit the feeders. Among the city it will be great tits, house and field sparrows, rock dove, gray crow. In a large park, on the outskirts, in a garden or in the countryside, at the edge of a forest, the species composition will be more diverse. Not only tits, but also woodpeckers, nuthatches, pikas, goldfinches, bullfinches, waxwings, jays, magpies and other birds will fly to the feeders. But, nevertheless, the most common visitors to the bird's "dining room" are tits. We have several types of them. Everyone knows the most numerous great tit. Beautiful, cheerful, trusting and restless yellow-breasted pichuga. And even its scientific Latin name sounds very beautiful - "Sail Major". This noisy family also has another smaller relative that looks like a great tit - only in black and white. This is a Muscovite or a black tit. You will often see it where spruce trees grow.

Their closest relatives are the gray titmouse with a black “cap”. Because of the ability to puff up feathers, the nut is also called puff. Go to the forest park, just do not forget to take unroasted seeds with you. Be patient and you will be able to wait until not only great tits, Muscovites and puffs sit on your hand for food, but also the blue titmouse - a yellow titmouse with an elegant blue "hat" (like a snow maiden's crown - so blue, azure color and shimmers). Hence the name - lazorevka!

And whoever is very, very lucky can meet a unique bird - a white tit. White and blue, she, like a toy from Gzhel, flies from twig to twig in search of hidden insects. This tit is so beautiful and beautiful that people call it the prince. It is found in swampy floodplains with old willows and thickets of reeds and cattails. The bird has become rare. It is now listed in the Red Book of Russia.

In the old pine or spruce forest you can see the grenadier - crested titmouse. She received such a name for a sharp striped crest, reminiscent of a grenadier soldier's hat.

Look - at the top of the birch, among the thin hanging branches, a flock of fluffy white balls with long black tails fluttered! These are long-tailed tits. They are so unusual, from a distance they resemble a small ladle-spoon with a long handle. Hence the popular nickname - a ladle. But they go down to the feeder very rarely, preferring to rummage through the branches of trees and shrubs in search of spiders and insects hidden in cracks in the bark or behind the scales of the buds.

If berries or small fruits are hung in the feeder or next to it (especially at the end of winter), this will attract bullfinches, waxwings, fieldfare thrushes. But to attract these birds, it is much more correct to plant mountain ash, viburnum, hawthorn, buckthorn, irga, bird cherry and other berry trees and shrubs on your feeding area. In some towns and villages, along with pigeons and sparrows, wild pigeons, which are rare in our country, ringed turtledoves, which began to winter in our rather harsh conditions, can fly.

Ducks may remain wintering on a non-freezing river or pond, try to diversify their meager winter diet with the remains of mixed feed, waste from a grain flow, elevator or from a canteen. You can’t feed them only with white and gray bread for a long time - ducks can get sick.

A student from the village wrote to us. Teleshovka, Tsilninsky district, Ulyanovsk region Ruslan Kulmatov, who feeds unusual birds: “At the beginning of winter, a flock of partridges settled on our straw stack. Every day I go out in the morning and feed them grain, but at the sight of me they all take off together, and when I leave, they come down noisily and peck at their breakfast. This bird "dining room" turned out to be the most original. By the way, in the old days, the Chuvash peasants had a good custom, when in the fall they specially left an uncompressed strip of grain in the field for partridges.

For tits, as well as for other wintering insectivorous birds, the best feeding is unsalted fat of any animals, unroasted sunflower seeds (they are very high in calories), pumpkins, and watermelon. They do not eat traditional millet or gray bread waste. This food will only attract the ubiquitous rock pigeons and sparrows. You can pour Hercules oatmeal with hot fat of animal origin; tits also eat this food. In case of interruptions in feed, you can feed the birds for a short time with leftovers from the table (boiled bones, cheese crusts, meat). For a bountiful New Year's Eve, there's an exotic recipe: cut a coconut across and hang it on a string - the best food for tits (unattainable for sparrows). Of all the "titmouse" foods, sparrows do not eat only watermelon and pumpkin seeds. They are more wary than great tits, so they are wary of unstable or shiny structures. These can be plastic bottles swaying in the wind with a narrow (3 cm in diameter) hole where tits squeeze through, but sparrows do not.

You can feed tits in cities; these birds appear here in winter in search of food. Feeding in cities preserves a certain number of tits in nature and makes it possible to observe them during feeding. In spring, the birds will fly away to the surrounding parks, forests and will nest far from feeding places. The next year, with the onset of cold and hunger, they reappear at the window or on the tree where the feeder hung the previous year. Some tits even persistently knock on the glass, as if demanding additional feeding. These are probably the birds that have already fed on the window feeder.

In a properly organized forestry, winter feeding of birds is also needed. Here the number of feeding species can be very large: these are several species (up to five) of our tits, and the great tit is no longer the most numerous species here. In a coniferous forest, there can often be chickadees, Muscovites, even crested tits, in a deciduous forest - blue tit. Indispensable here and crawl. Often there are large spotted and small spotted woodpeckers. Granivorous birds on feeders in the forest are also more likely. Among them are bullfinches, tap dancers, siskins, goldfinches. All these birds are very pleasant to observe, but sometimes they are so numerous that, like sparrows in the city, one has to somehow limit their number on the feeders.

From an economic point of view, these birds are of little use, since bullfinches and tap dances fly away to nest to the north, siskins fly to coniferous forests, while carduelis are granivorous in the full sense of the word and even feed their chicks mainly on the seeds of wild plants.

The most important winter feeding of birds in the orchard. The species composition of birds at feeders in the garden is rather limited. These are, of course, the same great tits, the usually numerically dominant species of the blue tit, especially in the southern part of the country, and the nuthatch. Muscovites appear from other tits in years of high abundance, only these pleasant birds do not remain for nesting in gardens.

Winter feeding of birds in the orchard, firstly, allows you to dramatically increase the number of tits. Each pair nests twice, and by autumn the number of tits increases tenfold. By spring, however, there are again few of them, 90% of them die in winter from hunger (and not from the cold, as is sometimes believed). Secondly, top dressing helps to keep young tits for the breeding season near the feeder, that is, in the orchard.

The great tit destroys insects not only in summer, but also in winter, and the latter, apparently, is even more important for us. In winter, tits cannot get by with one grain, they definitely need insects, and they are able to almost completely destroy mass pests wintering on a bole in tree branches. On clear, not too frosty or on quiet cloudy days, tits fly to the feeders for a short time in the morning, and then disappear: they collect nearby insects. These birds, as well as many others, have a very developed imitation of each other in search of food: as soon as one titmouse finds several wintering caterpillars of the codling moth at the base of the stem of an apple tree, a flock immediately descends from the trees and the search for food begins. After such an inspection of the trunks, there will be practically no wintering caterpillars left on them.

Attracting tits to the wintering grounds of codling moths is very simple: you need to apply drops of any unsalted melted fat on the bark on several trees. Birds quickly find their favorite food on the bark and, looking for it on the trunks, find the codling moth. First of all, of course, birds see and destroy caterpillars that winter openly in their nests (golden tail, hawthorn), but then they still prefer to look for insects wintering alone and covered.

It does not matter if well-fed tits do not find food in the feeder on a fine day, or if there is only a part of the usual daily allowance; then the birds willy-nilly have to go in search of insects. However, if there is a monotonous grain feed in the feeder, for example, hemp or sunflowers, tits will still leave to look for additional “animal food”.

But on rainy days, on sleet, after a snowfall with sticky snow and in severe frosts, tits stay near the feeder from dawn to dusk. It must certainly be full, since here it is the only source of food. On such days, especially if the weather is bad for a long time, you need to diversify the food more. Feeding should begin in early autumn. Then it is possible to keep more wandering birds in the garden, and tits have been wandering since August. And the more they appear in the garden even before deep snow, the more pests hiding at the base of the trunks and inaccessible in winter, they will destroy. In addition, since autumn there are more fine and warm days, on which tits work to collect insects in the garden, and do not feed at the feeder.

Nuthatches are at the feeder very often, but rarely more than a pair, or even one bird. The reason for this is the bird's intolerance towards its own kind. Nutcrackers, like tits, take a single seed from the feeder and crush it on a tree. Only tits pinch the seed with their paws, sitting on a branch, and the nuthatch thrusts it into the recess of the bark.

These birds, having eaten, tend to drag food from the feeder and hide it behind the bumps in the bark of trees. The food, however, does not disappear: quick-witted tits look for hidden sunflowers or hemp and feed on them right in front of the nuthatch, but he does not pay any attention to this and continues to stock up.

Remarkable success in attracting wintering useful birds was achieved by Professor P. A. Sviridenko in the garden in the village of Fefania near Kiev. A wicker basket was used as a feeder, placed near the window of the house for the convenience of observations. The main food was sunflower seeds, crumbs of white bread were added to them, and occasionally, in frosty weather, lard. Most often, great tits flew to the feeder. Titmouse, chickadees, nuthatches and small spotted woodpeckers used it systematically, but in smaller numbers, sometimes grosbeaks, finches, and buntings flew in. There was food in the feeder all year round, and this allowed the birds to visit the feeder even in summer and, in any case, start feeding early in autumn.

The number of attracted tits gradually increased. There were significantly more of them in the second year than in the first. One day in March there was a heavy snowfall, and the number of tits reached a record figure of -300. P. A. Sviridenko explains the success in attracting such a large number of birds only by the fact that there was always food in the feeder, at least starting from early autumn.

P. A. Sviridenko organized a feeding point in Kyiv, on the balcony of the apartment. A small cage with an open door quickly attracted tits. Over 6,000 arrivals were recorded on separate days. The titmouse, according to the calculations of the same author, eats 75 seeds per day, for each arrival the bird takes no more than one, obviously, 80 tits fed on the feeder. Small tits are sedentary. As experiments carried out in Latvia have shown, winter flocks do not leave their forest areas, but all the time stay only on them. Birds were fed on feeders, and then the feeder was gradually moved. Birds followed her: nuthatches and great tits, brown and black-headed chickadees, crested tits and blue tit. However, the birds followed the feeder only for a few hundred meters, already after 500 m only 15% of the original number of birds remained, the rest returned to where the feeder was.

The experiment was modified in the following way: the birds were caught at the feeder (180 tits of different species and nuthatches) and released at another feeder at a distance of 1-30 km from the first one. The birds returned to their “own” forest if the distance was not too great: up to 5–6 km for crested tits and chickadees and up to 10–20 km for great tits, blue tit and nuthatch (K. A. and E. K. Vilke).

These experiments convincingly show that birds, in this case, tits and nuthatches, not only in summer, but also in winter, during their flocking life, strictly adhere to their territories. If we manage to attract birds to the feeder, then these will be “our” birds, which will constantly work in those territories where the feeders are hung out.

With regular feeding, even migratory birds can linger at the feeder for the winter. Six starlings successfully overwintered in the village of Proletarskaya, Rostov region, although the frost here reached 15-20 ° C. Quite often, starlings winter on the outskirts of Moscow, they feed on feeders and in other places. In 1970 flocks of starlings overwintered in Ostankino (Moscow).

In winter, not only small songbirds are fed. In the snowy winter of 1962/1963, in some countries of Western Europe, wintering waterfowl were intensively fed. About 200-250 geese and up to 500 ducks gathered near the feeders. Diving ducks willingly took food from the water, coots fed on bread, geese preferred oats.

In the harsh winter of 1966, in the south of our country, in the Kyzylagach Reserve, a mass death of waterfowl began. When the reservoirs were frozen, food was not available to the ducks, they went out onto land and fed on the seeds of various herbs. Some of the ducks were so weak that they could be picked up by hand. It was then that the feeding of birds with compound feeds, which were obtained specifically for this, was applied here.

(Konstantin Razhaisky, livestock specialist of the department of biodiversity, monitoring and environmental education)

“Winter is a difficult time of the year for birds. The cold forced all insects to hide, only some trees retained their fruits, and seeds can be found on large weeds sticking out from under the snow.

Many people seek to help feathered neighbors survive this difficult period by arranging feeding grounds and feeders. But everything must be approached with skill, because by feeding the birds incorrectly, it is easy to harm them.

First of all, you need to understand that birds cannot be fed, you can only feed them. How is feeding different from feeding? When feeding, the birds receive the entire daily ration only from the feeder, and when feeding, only a part of it and they have to find the rest in nature. In nature, the diet of birds is very diverse. Moving through the forest, flocks of tits check cracks in the bark in search of wintering insects, their larvae and pupae, pick up seeds of various plants, and eat only seeds and fat at the feeder. And with a constantly full feeder, tits simply stop looking for other food. A monotonous diet, and even rich in fats, leads to liver disease. Instead of benefit, we cause irreparable harm to birds.

It is better to accustom yourself and the birds to a certain regime, filling the feeders once or twice a day at the same time. They poured a glass of seeds, tits pulled them apart, and that's it. No matter how they beg you, banging their beaks on the glass, be persistent and do not give in to feelings. Some bird foods are harmful and often deadly. First of all, it's all fried and salty. When eating salty food, salt quickly accumulates in excess in the body of birds, and their excretory system is less efficient than that of mammals, and poisoning of the body occurs. When frying, fats change their structure and cause severe damage to the liver. Also, spoiled food, rancid grain, moldy, musty products should not be used. They contain strong toxins. Even if poisoning does not lead to a quick death of the bird, it will weaken the body, the bird will fall ill and eventually die.

You can not give birds and millet. Unlike millet, millet is devoid of a shell, which leads to the oxidation of fats on its surface, the appearance of toxic substances, pathogens. Dangerous for birds and black bread. Rye starch is poorly absorbed by the bird's body, black bread is always more moist than white bread, has high acidity, which often leads to strong fermentation in the intestines up to intestinal volvulus.

So, what should not be given to birds in any case? Fried and salted seeds, salted bacon, millet, black bread and spoiled food with an unpleasant odor or mold. What then can feed them?

City pigeons are best fed with a specially prepared mixture, or at least wheat, and preferably barley, which can be bought at the Bird Market in Moscow. Of the cereals, pearl barley, which is peeled barley, is most suitable. White bread is not the best food for pigeons, but in small quantities it is quite suitable (but fried pies, whites, pizza, etc. are very harmful). You can add oatmeal to the Sisars, but not instant, but dense, not loose. In a small amount, you can add unroasted seeds. Barley is too tough for sparrows, but everything else that pigeons eat is fine for them too. Ducks are best fed with grain (grain mixture or wheat) or chicken feed, but these types of food sink in water, so there is practically no alternative to white bread. They eat ducks, but less willingly, and unroasted seeds that do not sink in water.

Unroasted sunflower seeds, medium-fat cottage cheese mixed with white breadcrumbs so as not to stick together, scraped lean beef, grated egg, hard-boiled, finely chopped fresh apple are placed in the bird feeder for tits. On frosty days, it is good to hang a piece of unsalted bacon, put a piece of butter. Tits should get used to other foods, except for seeds, so don't be upset if they don't eat it at first. In addition to these foods, nuthatches are happy to eat watermelon and pumpkin seeds.

It should be noted that if you already undertook to feed the birds in winter, then this should be done regularly - as the feed is consumed. Otherwise, you can destroy the birds accustomed to feeding. It is especially necessary to feed the birds during bad weather, in icy conditions, after a snowfall with sticky snow and in severe frosts. On days like this, you can't stop.

What can...

You can feed almost any bird. Preparation for this must begin in the summer, preparing food. Sometimes it's just enough not to throw away what we don't need. When eating watermelons and melons, collect and dry the seeds. In winter, they will be happy to feast on tits. They are also fed with sunflower and pumpkin seeds (not fried), hemp, pieces of unsalted lard and meat, various fats - margarine, butter, etc. They willingly eat tits and bread crumbs (black rye should not be given). It is better to use crushed stale bread. Fresh in the cold freezes and the birds will not be able to do anything with it. Sparrows and pigeons are also happy to eat bread.

For bullfinch and other granivorous birds, bunches of weeds are dried from summer and autumn - quinoa, nettle, horse sorrel, burdock, etc. For waxwings and thrushes-field ash - clusters of berries, viburnum, mountain ash, black and red elderberry. Bullfinches also willingly feast on them, but unlike the previous species, they do not eat berries, but bones.

In winter, near the feeding trough, you will see among the city such forest inhabitants as the nuthatch, woodpecker, jay. Nuthatches and woodpeckers feed together with tits and often stay in common flocks. The nuthatches eat everything that the tits do, but above all they are interested in the hung lard, meat, pieces of fat. Jays also eat everything. Especially for them, from September-October, you can store gifts - collect acorns.

A number of feeds can be used to feed birds. Some of them you can prepare yourself, or you can buy ready-made food in pet stores (mixtures for parrots and ornamental birds are suitable, although you can also use grain mixtures for rodents, which include oats, millet, seeds and other grains).

Sunflower seeds are eaten by all birds, but if there are few of them, feed them only to tits.
- Hemp seeds are excellent food for all birds.
- Watermelon, pumpkin and melon seeds, raw fresh fat and meat are readily eaten by tits.
- Oats are eaten by oatmeal and sparrows.
- Millet, millet love oatmeal and other birds.
- Crumbs of white bread are suitable for feeding all birds.

Many birds can be fed with weed seeds.

Quinoa seeds are eaten by many granivorous birds, but their tap dances are especially fond of.
- Nettle seeds are very fond of bullfinches, siskins, tap dancers, and the blue titmouse also eats them.
- Seeds of burdock and thistle - the main winter food for goldfinches.
- Horse sorrel seeds are readily eaten by bullfinches.

If you know what this or that bird likes, you can try to attract them to your garden by luring them with your favorite food. Of course, if these birds live in your area or fly there for the winter or summer. Here is the feed ration recommended by the RSPB for different birds:

Winter "pies" made from bacon and seeds attract tits, sparrows and greenfinches
- Lard and visceral fat are especially loved by tits, thrushes, wrens and woodpeckers
- Fresh or dry fruits and berries laid out on the ground will not go unnoticed by thrushes, robins (robins), tits and starlings
- Whole peanuts are a favorite treat of titmouses, greenfinches, sparrows, nuthatches, large spotted woodpeckers and siskins, and crushed peanuts are favorite treats of robins, forest hawkers and wrens. You can also try to attract charming and shy jays with peanuts.
- Cheese is loved by robins, robins and thrushes
- Many birds like potatoes, if you're lucky, they can even lure wild ducks, geese, swans and pheasants

...and why not?

Birds should not be fed salted nuts, chips, coconut, and it is better not to feed salted lard.

Before adding grain feed, it must be thoroughly calcined in a frying pan or baking sheet, until completely dry and flowable. After cooling, it is poured into a bottle and the cork is screwed on.

How to make a feeder?

Setting up a feeder is easy. In the simplest version, this is a plank with sides nailed to the edges so that the food is not blown away by the wind. When arranging feeders, you should not chase too complex and bizarre designs. It is better to make a few simpler ones and feed more birds. It is only important that, if possible, their food is protected from bad weather and pigeons. In winter, birds are not up to luxury - just to survive. The complication of the design of the feeder goes, first of all, in the direction of protecting food from bad weather and competitors of those birds that you want to feed. For protection, various covers, side walls are made.

Many make homemade feeders out of plywood, wood, or plastic. You can easily and quickly make feeders from milk bags and plastic bottles. They are more suitable for small birds: sparrows and tits. In order for the feeder not to be a trap, all holes must be through and located closer to the bottom. Automatic feeders are very convenient. These can be bottles turned upside down, or other designs. An open feeder, which is a board with food, should have a canopy covering it from snow.

Arbor-shaped feeder (designed for small forest birds and squirrels)

1. Fasten four racks, with a total length of 150 cm, from below with crossbars around the perimeter.

2. Fasten two opposite crossbars with a bar or board 10 cm wide. This bar (board) is a support for attaching the central pillar.

3. Two tiers of feeders are attached to the post. The upper tier (in the form of a tray with a side along the perimeter) is located directly under the roof itself and is intended for small birds.

4. Below, at a distance of 1/3 from the top, there is a second feeder for large birds and squirrels. It is also made in the form of a tray with a rim around the perimeter. A hipped roof made of improvised material (unpainted boards) protects the feeder from rain and snow.

Feeder in the form of a gallery for small forest birds

1. The roof and base of the feeder is made of a wide board or several boards with a total width of 15-20 cm, a length of 40 cm.

2. The roof and base are fastened with vertical posts made of improvised material (board or wooden slats). Width between uprights 30-35 mm to let small birds through.

feeder house

Hanging:

1. Make a pallet from boards with a small side of planks.
2. The roof is gable - we recommend making the roof slopes from "lining". Nail the top and bottom of the roof with nails.
3. If boards are used, then fasten the slope boards with planks from the inside.
4. Make a suspension from stainless wire, with which the feeder is attached to a thick branch of a tree.

On the pole:

1. It is required to make a support-column for the hanging feeder.
2. Attach a large feed tray to the post. The pallet is made of two boards that have cutouts for the pole. The ends of the pallet are bordered by a low side.

And such a feeder is dangerous for birds - they can get confused

Where to hang?

It is best to hang the feeder on the south side at a height of 1.5-2 meters. Thus, you will protect it from wind and snow (in our country they are usually northwestern), on sunny days the food will warm up and thaw (if moisture suddenly gets into it), a high altitude will not allow rodents to get to the food.

In a sparsely populated place, you can arrange a whole "restaurant" for birds. Under a common large canopy, the main feeder is placed in the middle, and pieces of bacon, bunches of berries and weeds, various packages, etc. are hung around the edges. In this case, many more birds can feed at the same time. Here it is better to make several small feeders than one large one, because tits are very aggressive towards relatives. At the same time, 1-2 birds can be on the feeder.

Feeders for tits can be placed anywhere. They will find them both in the forest and in the city center on the windowsill. Bullfinches, goldfinches, tap dancers, siskins are more careful. It is better to feed them on the edges, in large parks, in wastelands. Bunches of weeds and berries are tied on the branches of bushes or trees not high from the ground. You can even stick them in the snow. For waxwings and thrushes, bunches of berries are also hung on branches or near large feeding tables. Don't stop helping until spring! Birds will soon get used to your "dining room" and will rely on this source of food. If you have started, then continue, even if you have very little food, feed the birds. In addition, consistency will provide you with a wide variety and number of feathered patrons.

According to observations in the Bitsevsky forest garden, up to 30 or more birds (primarily tits) can live near one feeder, and squirrels also regularly come. Birds not only eat what is in the feeder, but also carefully inspect the branches and trunks of trees that are nearby, destroying the wintering forms of pests. If on the site this will be done during the winter by several dozen tits; it is unlikely that any of the insects will be able to survive. Thus, taking care of bird food in winter, you also help in the matter of destroying pests.

About the birds.

Tit

From the end of autumn, tits appear near the feeders. Among them there are both settled and those who arrived from the Far North. In the Moscow region, the restless and restless great tit is more common. Its popular name is "grasshopper tit". This bird becomes very aggressive when it takes food from other smaller and weaker tits. In addition, she often uses other people's stocks. The female great tit, hatching eggs, is able not only to stand up for herself, but also to scare away the enemy with a formidable hiss. The Great Tit is recognizable by its shiny black cap, black throat and breast stripe, white cheeks, yellow sides and breast, greenish back, grayish-bluish tail and wings. This tit, even in winter, looks for pests in cracks in the bark of trees. She is by no means a vegetarian, so she eats not only various seeds, but also pieces of meat. The best treat for a titmouse is a piece of frozen fat, which is hung from a branch or placed in a feeder.

Less often, the crested tit flies to the feeder. It is easy to distinguish by a sharp crest. Small tits include: blue tit (with a bluish cap, wings and tail); a grayish Muscovite (with a white spot on the back of the head) and a chickadee (with a brownish back, a light breast and a black cap). All of them are happy to eat the same food as the great tit.

Sparrow

We always have a lot of field (village) sparrows next to the feeder. They are easy to recognize and not to be confused with house (city) sparrows by black spots on their cheeks and a chestnut cap on their heads. From a distance, the spots can be mistaken for the eyes, so the village "big-eyed" sparrows look very pretty. There is always food for birds in our feeder in winter and early spring. The guaranteed food has led to the fact that for several years now one large flock of sparrows of different ages has been living near the house, which is desperately fighting for a “place in the sun” with all other birds. These "natives" manage to drive away not only other sparrows, but also larger birds. It should be noted that sparrows are brawlers and excellent fighters.

House sparrows (with a gray cap and black upper chest) flock to larger urban and rural housing developments. They live near multi-storey buildings. In food, all sparrows are unpretentious, willingly eat crumbs of white bread and any grains. People can leave a loaf of white bread in the feeder, which sparrows will happily peck at. In frost, it is better to cut it lengthwise into two parts and put “crumbs” up. These birds suffer greatly in cold winters and even remain tailless, having lost their frostbitten tails.

Woodpecker

There are many woodpeckers in the Moscow region. There is also a black woodpecker (zhelna), it is the size of a good crow. During the day, the bird searches for insects in wood and under the bark of dry trees. More likely to see a Great Spotted Woodpecker at the feeder. One winter, such a bird spent the whole daylight hours on the drain next to the feeder. In windy weather, the woodpecker pressed against the trunk to stay on the tree. This bright woodpecker is larger than a starling. He has a black top of the head (the back of the male's head is red), white forehead and cheeks, fawn throat, breast and abdomen; red undertail and catchy stripes on wings and tail. A female woodpecker with a vile character lived on our site. She not only did not allow other birds to go to the feeder, but also did not allow them to eat the food that she herself did not eat (cereals, bread crumbs, etc.). If the birds began to feast at the time when the woodpecker was dozing, then she instantly woke up and made a low flight around the feeder. I don’t know what it meant, but all the birds flew away in fright. The woodpecker's favorite food was a dried loaf of white bread. At night, the woodpecker flew away for the night. It all ended with the fact that this bird began to gouge a thick plum branch. We did not want to lose this tree at all, so we had to drive the woodpecker from the plum tree. The bird began to fly to the site less and less, and then completely disappeared. I heard several stories told by gardeners I know, in which woodpeckers performed destructive actions in the country. They damaged not only trees, but also managed to gouge a wooden front door in one house.

On the feeders you can meet no less voracious small spotted woodpeckers that arrive with titmouses. Small spotted woodpeckers have a slightly different coloration: a red crown (the female has a light one), a black back with transverse stripes and an off-white abdomen with strokes.

Waxwings

Huge flocks of waxwings often arrive in the Moscow region at the beginning of winter, sometimes around Christmas. These birds are slightly smaller than the starling, with large pink crests and pinkish-gray plumage. At feeders, they are interested in seeds and dried berries. Waxwings fly to us from the forest-tundra and taiga. In summer there is a lot of food: mosquitoes, dragonflies, butterflies and other insects. With the onset of winter, waxwings look for food in other parts. Along the way, they feed on the fruits of mountain ash, barberry, wild rose and juniper. Birds are greedy. Their body does not have time to absorb all the food, so a lot of semi-digested residues remain on the snow. This gluttony continues for several weeks. Then waxwings fly to new places. At the end of winter - beginning of spring, these beautiful birds reappear in the Moscow region. And since there are few berries left by this time, the waxwings are saturated with swollen buds of aspen and poplar.

Sometimes beautiful waxwings are kept in cages. But in captivity, well-fed birds lead a sedentary lifestyle. Their natural waste accumulates under the perch so rapidly that frequent cleaning of the cages is required. Not everyone likes this, so caged waxwings are often released into the wild.

Other resident and northern migrant birds

The common nuthatch is less and less common in the Moscow region. This bird can be identified by its long straight beak, wide black stripes on the side of the head, grayish-bluish plumage above, light breast, brown sides, reddish rump and white spots on the tail. The nuthatch skillfully moves along tree trunks even upside down. He makes solid stocks and hides individual seeds. The nuthatch menu consists of insects, their larvae, acorns, nuts and maple seeds. Birds need coarse sand for digestion. The nuthatch usually arrives at the feeders along with the tits.

Sometimes near the feeders you can see a greenfinch with an olive-green or grayish-greenish color of the body, black tips of the wings and tail. In severe cold, the bird moves to the south, when it warms up, it returns to its original places.

And how good is the bright goldfinch with the black top of the head, black wings and tail; white cheeks, forehead, belly and rump; a red ring around the beak and a yellow transverse stripe on the wings. He quickly eats sunflower seeds, millet, oats, wheat and other cereals.

The common bunting adheres to the same diet (yellow head, throat, chest, abdomen; brown tail and wings; white stripes on the sides of the tail).

Occasionally you can see tap dancing. This is a small bird with a grayish-brown back, raspberry-red crown, chest and goiter; a black spot on the chest; whitish belly. She likes millet, oats and wheat.

Bullfinches are one of the most beautiful birds of the Moscow region. They fly more often for the remaining rowan berries. The bullfinch has a black cap, a ring at the beak; white rump, ash-grey back, pink-red belly. In females, the ventral side is gray. In winter, bullfinches eat dried mountain ash and hawthorn, maple, ash and grass seeds well.

The field thrush also loves dried berries of mountain ash and hawthorn. This is a large thrush with a gray top of the head and gray rump, brown back, white belly, dark strokes on the breast and sides. In warm winters, he sometimes stays in the Moscow region, and does not fly to more southern places.

You need to feed the birds at every opportunity, even while hiking and skiing in the forest and in parks. In some forests and forest parks near Moscow there are stationary feeders, which are usually empty. Take a bag of bird food with you: cereals, sunflowers, pumpkin seeds, zucchini, watermelons, melons or grapes. Place pieces of bread in the feeder. The poultry menu also includes ground crackers, crushed shells, grated carrots, finely chopped cheese, cottage cheese and many other products. Some birds (grouse, hazel grouse and black grouse) need coarse sand and small river pebbles in winter. It is hidden under the ice, and without such an additive, food is rubbed worse in bird stomachs: needles, buds, birch and alder catkins.

Feed BUT DON'T TAME!

Dear nature lovers!

If you really love Nature, animals, birds, and all other creatures created by the creator, then the best thing you can do for them is

DO NOT TRAIN THEM TO HANDS and to a person in general!

Doing like this - you amuse your pride,
and do not think at all about our smaller creatures.

Of course, you won’t do anything bad to them, feed them from your hand, be touched, play and go home.

And after you another will come, and they will fly to him as to you. And sit on his arm. If you think that all people are brothers and young naturalists, you are a little mistaken.

The best thing you can do for wildlife is to show living creatures in every possible way that man is an enemy, and you need to stay as far away from him as possible!

Think about it. And you will understand that this is so. Squirrels, birds, deer, and anyone else suffer and die from your such false and short-sighted love (for yourself).

FEED THE BIRDS!

Winter is a difficult period in the life of birds... Winter feeding, on the one hand, makes life easier for a certain number of birds and helps to survive harsh days, and on the other hand, it also has a great educational value - it instills in children love and compassion for living beings.

Feed the birds in winter.
Let from all over
They will flock to you, like home,
Stakes on the porch.

Their food is not rich.
Need a handful of grain
One handful -
And not scary
They will have winter.

How many of them die - do not count,
It's hard to see.
But in our heart there is
And the birds are warm.

Is it possible to forget:
Could fly away