What birds eat millet in winter. We prepare food for wintering birds. Best Bird Food

One of the most popular pictures in playgrounds is the feeding of pigeons. Toddlers love to chase birds, and older children love to feed them with seeds and bread crumbs. And alas, even mothers do not know that bread will do more harm to birds than good.
Let's talk about bird feeding today. This is a wonderful activity that you can do with your child, not only introducing him to the good and useful, but also telling a little about those pets that you will feed.

What should not be fed to birds?

• Bread (both white and black). Birds digest it very hard, it has too much protein and fat, it fills the stomach, but does not provide enough energy. There is yeast, salt and sometimes milk in bread - this is a very heavy mixture for bird digestion, because yeast begins to ferment, dairy products are not digested at all and poison the bird until they leave digestive tract(birds don't have the bacteria to digest dairy) and the amount of salt is too much for their little body, it's like eating chips, dried squid or drinking sea water all the time.
• Peas and cabbage will wander painfully in the stomach, but it should be noted, but the immunity of birds is proper digestion. As soon as digestion is disturbed in any bird, immunity immediately drops dramatically.
• Potatoes (too much starch), cabbage, onions and herbs.
• Nothing salty, smoked, fried
• Raw buckwheat, millet (millet is devoid of a shell, which leads to the oxidation of fats on its surface, the appearance of toxic substances, pathogens.)
• citrus fruits
• It is not necessary to feed spoiled (rancid, etc.) cereals to the birds.
• Cookies, muffins, potato chips.
• Be careful with sunflower seeds. They are good because they are high in calories, it helps to endure the cold, while this calorie content is not as harmful as it would be for birds with lard (pork fat), which would be much more difficult to digest. Seeds are bad because some birds (for example, pigeons) do not know how to peel seeds and swallow them whole, seeds with sharp sides injure the throat and goiter of the bird, and the husk does not affect digestion and the state of the liver in general in the best way.

Best Bird Food

• Bird feed mix (available at pet stores)
• Sunflower and pumpkin seeds - always raw, unsalted and better slightly ground (for example, with a meat hammer)
• Grains (not flakes!) wheat, barley, millet, oats
• Cereals: rice, barley, wheat, corn. Rice and pearl barley are better to slightly steam.
• Chopped uncooked nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts)
• Chopped dried fruits (prunes, dried apricots, raisins)
• finely chopped fresh apple
• finely chopped boiled egg
• lard unsalted and not smoked

1. Mix ready-made parrot food with inexpensive grains and seeds. Invite your child to the store to choose cereals that can be fed to birds and make their own mixture. To make it easier to pour the mixture into the feeders, cut a scoop from a plastic bottle.
2. Bird food can be stored in a container with a lid and decorated with bird stickers or painted
3. Don't overfeed the birds! You must help them survive, and not take them on allowance, making them helpless. Fill the feeder once a day.
4. Keep it clean! The feeder can become a breeding ground for infection, so remove uneaten food and wash the feeder once a month with hot water and some kind of disinfectant.

Bird Chef

We offer the most creative and diligent children and mothers to open a bird restaurant :). What is so tasty and interesting you can cook for birds?

Ice wreaths for birds

If the temperature is below freezing outside, then ice wreaths with treats can be hung on the trees. Place the feed mixture in a baking dish, cover with water and place in the freezer.
The bird blank can be smeared with softened butter or peanut butter and sprinkled with seeds on top. The delicacy must be put in the refrigerator so that it freezes. As a basis, you can use letters and shapes cut out of cardboard.

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Hanging treats can be placed in molds or plastic cups. Pour the feed mixture into a container with melted animal fat or gelatin diluted according to the instructions. Put the prepared thick mass into plastic cups, previously lubricated with vegetable oil. Put a string inside for hanging.

Alternatively, pour the mixture into cookie cutters by inserting a stick or straw where the rope hole is supposed to be. To make discs, spread the mass in a thin layer on the bottom of round containers, such as sour cream cups. The mass can be laid out in layers of different food - you get real puff pastries. After filling, place the molds in the refrigerator until completely solidified.

Treats can be hung along with large food in vegetable nets.

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Edible garland for birds.

Invite the child to string an edible garland on a thread or wire. For this, dried and fresh apples, large nuts, dried fruits, rowan and rosehip berries, pieces of unsalted fat are suitable.
On the branches of a tree, you can plant or hang unsalted bacon - a favorite delicacy of titmouse and woodpeckers. Also, the birds will be happy with the heads of sunflowers, if you have them left from the summer season.

The chef draws

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With the help of cereals, you can lay out various drawings on the snow, your child will surely like this unusual way drawing, and the birds - their laid table :)

Photo: Iuliia Malivanchuk/Rusmediabank.ru

To feed or not?

1. We spoil the gene pool of birds. If we regularly feed birds (especially passerines), then we help not only strong, but also weak individuals that should have died. These weak birds build nests in the spring and breed chicks, leaving them with their not the best genes. So we help specific birds, but we do a disservice to the whole species.
2. Irresponsibility leads to the death of birds. Many birds, especially tits and sparrows, quickly get used to the fact that food is being prepared for them, waiting for the next portion to be taken out. If you have been feeding your feathered friends for some time, and then left somewhere or could not go for food, the birds will wait for you at the feeder, instead of looking for it elsewhere. Waiting on freezing days is certain death, especially for those with fast metabolisms.
3. Incorrectly selected food. Not everyone knows what is possible and what. They peck at everything that a person offers them, because. in the cold season you don’t have to choose, and then they get sick and die. Therefore, it is very important to choose the right food, otherwise you do not save the birds, but destroy them.

If you decide to feed wild birds, take it responsibly: regularly replenish the feeder with only healthy food. Take on this business only when you are sure that you can pour treats into the feeder until the very spring. If you deceive their expectations, you will cause the death of your wards.

What not to feed birds in winter

What else can not be given:
1. Any salty foods: lard, and crackers, and cookies. In birds, excess salt is not excreted with sweat, as in humans, because. they don't have sweat glands. They can get rid of it only through the kidneys, and it can be difficult for them to cope with the increased load.
2. Black bread. It has a lot of salt. Part of the food remains in their crop, where the bread begins to ferment. Birds develop diarrhea, which is why they quickly die in winter, when any health problems become fatal.
3. Roasted sunflower seeds. They harm the liver of birds, so they should not be treated with fried seeds.
4. Millet. Shops sell peeled millet. Fats on the surface are oxidized from it, harmful substances appear. If the birds constantly eat millet, they may die. In order not to harm the health of birds, millet must first be washed and then boiled.
5. Fig. Rice is a grain that swells in the stomach. Small birds (titmouse, sparrow) have a small stomach, so swollen rice will hurt them.

Do not give them potatoes, both raw, which contains solanine, and boiled, with a high content of starch. You can not feed them with canned food, as well as cat and dog food, both granular and soft.

What to feed the birds

How to make a nutrient mixture? Its basis is sunflower seeds. To diversify the diet of feathered friends, you need to mix the seeds with oats, millet (you can buy it at the pet store), and also add a little flaxseed, canary and hemp seeds. You can throw in some crumbs of white bread, chopped wheat and barley. Permitted to birds and dense hercules.

What to feed different birds

Worth it or not? Everyone must answer this question for himself. If you have the time and some money to purchase quality food, then it's worth it, thus you will support the birds in the winter. Those who count every penny and cannot afford to buy raw seeds (and they are not cheap), millet and other cereals, who cannot regularly visit their feeder due to health problems or for other reasons, should not do this. By deceiving birds that will wait for the next portion of food, you are doing them more harm than good. Be responsible, we are responsible for those we have tamed.

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 set of feeds that you offer, the more species birds 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 is, without a doubt, one of the complete and energetically beneficial feeds for all granivorous and omnivorous birds! Sparrows will fly on sunflower seeds, different types tits (great tit, blue tit, chickadees, etc.), greenfinches, buntings, goldfinches, siskins and even nuthatch! 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 seeds of burdock, quinoa, nettle, thistle, hemp, etc. for them.

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!

Feeding birds in winter is the right thing to do, but people don't always understand how to do it. Many parents make feeders, and children themselves pour mountains of food so that their favorite birds do not go hungry. However, this is not always the right decision. In most cases, people do not know how to feed the same tits and sparrows in winter, and even more so, what exactly they can be fed.

How to feed tits and sparrows in winter

Before you run and pour mountains of bird food into the feeder, you should remember that there should not be much of it. But this applies only to those cases when there are no severe frosts on the street. The thing is that titmouse and sparrows need to be fed, and not to arrange a feast for them. Otherwise, they will stop looking for food on their own, which will adversely affect their ability to survive.

It is best to place feeders on tree branches, but high from the ground. This is done so that rodents and pets do not get to food and birds. In addition, feed should be added to the feeder on a schedule so that titmouse and sparrows get used to the schedule. It should also be noted that the process of feeding the birds should be carried out until the very spring, so that the birds do not circle hungry around the feeder.

What can and cannot be fed to tits and sparrows in winter

What can you feed:

The table below shows the foods that you can and cannot feed tits in winter.

The table below shows the foods that you can and cannot feed sparrows in winter.

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.

How to get kids involved in bird feeding

It is best to feed the birds in winter together with children. So they will learn to take care of our smaller brothers and love nature. To do this, you can turn the feeding of tits and sparrows into a game.

For example, one piece of bacon can be tied to a branch, and from the bottom you can make a small rocker out of another piece. So the birds will have lunch, and the children will have fun, seeing the titmouse on the swing.

If you wait long enough, the bird will take food even from the hands of a person, but this will require patience.

In addition, you can take the cones and roll them in bird treats, and then hang them on tree branches. Simply put, the process of simply feeding birds during the winter season can cheer you up even in inclement weather. Everything, of course, depends on the imagination of the person.

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 accessible 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 "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

Winter promises to be cold. And therefore, the birds, accustomed to man, will especially need his support. But when doing a good deed, it is important to remember some simple rules so as not to harm the birds with your impulse.

If you undertook to feed, feed until spring

Most of all, small birds need human help - tits, bullfinches, blackbirds, nuthatches, tap dances, goldfinches, grosbeaks, sparrows. They have problems with food in winter. And feeders are made most often for them. Bullfinches and fieldfare thrushes can also feed on berries. This year, by the way, there are especially a lot of mountain ash and wild rose, which, according to popular belief, indicates the impending cold winter. But tits do not eat berries, they need a different top dressing. “Feeding the birds is a very responsible business. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of how much, - said Anna Stekleneva, head of the laboratory environmental education ICG SB RAS. - If you hang a feeder, then you need to add food to it regularly until spring. What happens when you stop adding food? Birds remember well where they were fed. We have seen this in practice. The tit will fly to the same place and wait, instead of looking for other food places. It turns out that we are deceiving her. In the end, the bird may simply die of hunger. So, if you are not sure that you are ready to regularly replenish the feeder, it is better not to take it. ”

What food can kill a bird, and what can save?

“For some reason, many people add rice to the feeder, but this cannot be done! Anna Stekleneva explained. Rice tends to swell in the stomach. And at the same titmouse the stomach is scanty at all. Swollen rice will cause her suffering. This also applies to other cereals that swell when in contact with a humid environment: pearl barley, buckwheat. From cereals, you can use oatmeal and millet, ideally millet, in other words, unpeeled millet. In a purified form, millet oxidizes and loses its beneficial properties. You can buy millet at pet stores. Sometimes millet goes in mixtures for birds along with oats and other cereals. The main food that is useful to all birds is sunflower seeds. It is important that they are not processed by anything. Salted and roasted seeds can harm the bird's digestion. And it is best to pour unpeeled seeds - the birds are used to pecking them. Bread crumbs for birds are also possible, but the main thing is that it should not be black bread. It causes fermentation in the stomach. Raw fat will help the birds survive the cold. Naturally, it should be unprocessed: not salted, not peppered, not smoked. Salo does not have to be cut into pieces. You can simply hang a large piece by the wire - it is convenient for the birds to sit on it and peck out small pieces. Salo is high-calorie and nutritious. This is the point: in order for the bird not to freeze, it must be full.

Pigeon Protection

Inevitably, pigeons will fly to the feeders and push smaller birds. “Opinions are divided here,” said Anna Stekleneva. - Someone thinks that pigeons also need to be fed, someone is sure that they need to be driven away so that the little ones can eat. We recommend everyone to make such feeders so that a bird the size of a tit or a bullfinch can penetrate there. If a pigeon flies to the feeder, the titmouse, goldfinch and others will not get anything - they cannot withstand this competition. This is the situation with pigeons. They have been living next to humans for a long time, which means they are more adapted, they are used to eating in landfills. In addition, they are larger, it is easier for them to find food. Our task is to feed the small bird. Pigeons will always find food for themselves. If you made the entrance to the feeder wide, you can stretch the ropes that will allow the tit to get inside, but the pigeon will not be allowed in. Often, feeders are made from plastic bottles, cutting an entrance into them. Here, too, there are nuances. The edges of the entrance must be pasted over with electrical tape. In frost, the plastic becomes sharp as a knife, the bird can cut its paws on the edges. You can hang feeders on trees, near forest paths, so that it is convenient to add food. “By the way, we noticed one peculiarity in Akademgorodok,” Anna Stekleneva noted. - Our feeders hang along the paths, and the residents, passing by, always add something. They may not be ripe for creating their own feeder, but they will take a handful of seeds from home on their way to work, such a habit is being developed. We think that next to the feeders hang signs with a list of useful and harmful food for birds.

Don't feed birds of prey

With small birds, everything is clear. But what about the big ones? Don't they need our help? Many birds of prey migrate to warmer climes. But some remain to winter in Siberia. Among them are the Ural Owl, Hawk, Sparrowhawk and Goshawk. “When there is no food base in the forest (most of the animals migrated, many rodents hide under the snow), birds of prey can fly to the city for food. In the city, it is sometimes easier to hunt, for example, for pigeons, - explained Alexander Milezhik, head of the Novosibirsk Center for the Rehabilitation of Birds of Prey. - I will immediately note that it is better not to feed them at all, not to lure them into the city. This can be very harmful. The city poses many dangers for birds of prey - these are cars, shop windows ... Owls constantly beat against glass. Again, in the city, crows can peck at a bird. Or, if you feed the same owl incorrectly, you can kill it. ” Having fed birds on your balcony, you can admire these small wild birds all winter. They will not give into hands, but they will delight with the view, visiting again and again. And you will understand that it is not in vain that you are trampling this planet, but you are saving living beings from hunger. Doing good is so simple, but still responsible!