CHEX TV airdate: Friday Sept. 30th 5-5:30pm
Click link to watch this episode online.
As the days get shorter and the nights longer (and colder) birds need to fuel up on high energy food to survive. In the winter when the nights are long and VERY cold, birds need to eat from dawn till dusk to survive. High energy foods like peanuts and suet are great ways to help your back yard friends.
We have a wide variety of feeders in which you can offer whole peanuts, hulled peanuts and suet. We find the hulled peanuts are the best for a number of reasons. In the mesh style feeders the peanuts are wedged in pretty tightly so you don’t have to fill it as often (which is nice on those cold winter days) and also it takes less energy for the bird to get a seed and gobble it down. Peanuts in the shell are actually more expensive and can cause a mess with all of those shells (likely in your neighbours garden). But, it can be fun to watch the blue jay struggle to get that peanut out of the feeder. It gives you a good opportunity to examine their beautiful feathers!
Our suet is double rendered which means it is very dense and doesn’t fall on the ground as easily as the birds begin to peck at it. It also does NOT contain cornmeal. Cornmeal is a filler which the birds don’t like and it goes moldy very quickly. Our suet is made with pure beef fat and peanut meal. Some suet blocks have fruit in them which other birds like orioles and grosbeak like.
Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, Chickadees and Nuthatches especially love peanuts and suet.
Tune into this short segment for more information.