Help the Winter Songbirds And They Can Brighten Up The Winter

Adding attracting for the birds is one way to broaden the pleasure you find in your landscape.  Enjoyment in the winter can be heightened by seeing songbirds and listening to them singing their songs in your backyard. If you have had spring, summer, and fall garden plantings that attracted birds putting out bird feeders targeting specific birds will allow you to continue to enjoy them. Attracting songbirds to your yard is easy if you pick the right bird foods to attract them. Songbirds include cardinals, blue jays, finches, woodpeckers, and mourning doves. Each bird has different preferences of food so if you make it available it will invite them into your landscape and brighten your winter.
Cardinals: Put safflower seeds that they love in a hopper feeder. While, they will also eat sunflower seeds with those you’re also apt to get grackles, blackbirds; known as the bossy birds.
Blue Jays: Put out suet and sunflower seeds, though their favorite are peanuts in a shell or hulled peanuts. They can frighten away smaller birds so you may want to put peanuts in their own feeder.
Finches:  Put out nyjer seed in tube feeders or net bags, this is sometimes called thistle seed.
Woodpeckers and Nuthatches:  Put out beef suet for red-bellied woodpeckers and nuthatches in a metal suet holder. They adore this winter food compared to their other season fare that features insects. You can get raw suet from your  meat market or buy suet cakes at the local birdseed or hardware store.
Mourning Doves and Juncos:  Put out cracked corn,;they will eat off the ground.
When you are buying birdseed, choose a wild mixed birdseed mix that is high in terms of sunflower seeds and peanuts. Avoid mixes that have wheat, grain byproducts, red millet, and milo. The other creature comfort that you can provide for your feathered friends is birdbath with a heater. When so many water sources are frozen solid, a heated ice-free birdbath offers birds a necessity and will pay you back in a multitude of birds visiting your yard.
Well-done landscape design can help you enjoy your yard year-round.  And the right plantings and feed can invite in wildlife to add to that enjoyment.