Nothing But Leftovers? – LIFE IN THE LOWER SUSQUEHANNA RIVER WATERSHED

If you provide supplemental foods for the birds visiting your garden sanctuary, we don’t need to tell you how expensive those provisions have become. It can be quite frustrating when the majority of these pricey supplies get gobbled up by the chunky squirrels that dominate your feeding station and leave hungry birds with nothing but the tiny little scraps.

Here at susquehannawildlife.net headquarters, we like to feed whole peanuts in the shell to the resident and migratory native birds. But placed out in the open on a stump or a tray, or even within a hopper feeder, peanuts are quickly carried away and cached for latter use by squirrels and jays. The chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, wrens, and woodpeckers that could really use the extra food to maintain their body fat through the winter get nothing but leftovers.

It’s not unusual for squirrels and jays to scarf up and carry away 90% or more of the expensive peanuts placed at your feeding station. The dozen or more other species of native birds that will partake of this offering get the leftovers or nothing at all.

We’ve discovered a solution that, for us, saves money and more efficiently feeds the native species of birds that stop by our oasis. We’ve been using inexpensive ($6-$8) wire mesh tube feeders intended for suet nuggets to serve whole peanuts in the shell to our guests. As long as they can’t knock the feeders to the ground, squirrels have failed to raid the contents. Like other birds, Blue Jays can still peck away to remove the peanuts from their shells and eat them on the spot, but they can no longer haul off a whole feeder load at a time. Each must carefully crack the shell and remove an individual peanut or portion thereof for immediate consumption. The empty shells remain mostly in the tubes and don’t make a mess. Pesky hoards of non-native European Starlings sometimes visit, but soon become frustrated because their bills aren’t adapted for cracking the hardened peanut husks; they grab any loose morsels they can get, then move along.

Suet Nugget Feeders — We assemble these suet nugget feeders without installing the included perches. We fill them with UNSALTED peanuts in the shell, then hang them from stiff wire hooks beneath the larger horizontal limbs on some of our trees. About every 5 to 10 days, we take them down to remove empty shells, clean the feeder, and add peanuts. A 2-pound bag that would disappear within hours if freely accessible to squirrels now fills 3 feeders or more and nourishes our native birds for a week or longer.

The list of native birds visiting our peanut feeders includes:

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Blue Jay

Carolina Chickadee

Black-capped Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

White-breasted Nuthatch

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Carolina Wren

The most recent addition to the list of birds feasting on peanuts from our wire mesh tube feeders was this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that visited yesterday.

So don’t pay hard-earned cash to feed nothing but leftovers to your intended guests, give wire mesh tube feeders and whole peanuts in the shell a try. The colorful native birds will thank you with their presence.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply