Help Birds by Offering High Fat Foods

High fat foods may be considered unhealthy by most people, but they highly are sought out by backyard birds. Fat provides them with many important nutritional benefits:

• Foods high in fat are the most concentrated energy source that a bird can consume.
• Stored body fat is the primary energy supply that fuels a bird between meals, through cold winter nights and throughout migration.
• Birds actively use bird feeders during the winter, especially first thing in the morning and just before dusk. These are the times they stoke their internal heater with fat to get the day started or to replenish their fat reserves to endure another cold night.
• Bird feeders can be an important food source during winter. When severe weather impacts wild food supplies, birds will turn to feeders as a critical source of high fat foods.
• When a bird exhausts all of its fat reserves, protein, scavenged mostly from muscles, is used to sustain its energy needs. It is important for birds to eat plenty of fat calories each day in order to maintain their strength and fitness.
• High fat foods also provide many of the dietary pigments birds need to impart color in their feathers. These pigment create feather colors that range from red, orange, and yellows to violet.

The top recommended high fat foods for birds are:

Recommended Blends: No Mess NM, No Mess Plus, TreeNutty Plus, Choice Plus
Recommended Seeds: Peanuts, Nyjer, Sunflower Chips
Recommended Other Foods: Suet (PB & J, Naturally Nuts, Nuts & Berries) Bark Butter, Bark Butter Bits