Our new favorite thing to feed our backyard birds is peanut butter spread. Our peanut feeders are very popular with the birds, both the shelled and whole in the shell peanuts, but we are having great luck with the wildlife peanut butter spread. Ours is on a simple wooden feeder as in the picture, with the perches as we seem to feel like this will help the non clinging birds have a bit of this special treat should they care to try it, but of course that’s all our human doing as the birds manage to cling all over stuff without our micro-managing. Check this feeder and spread starter kit at Peanut, Nut, Peanut Butter Bird Feeders.

Some people use the peanut butter spread directly on the bark of a tree. Just smear it right on there. They have great luck with this method and report to us that woodpeckers in particular love it. It is a great system to attract woodpeckers to feeding station as they are likely to hang out in the trees around a feeding station for awhile before taking the plunge into landing on the actual bird feeders. We haven’t tried this method of spreading the peanut butter mix on the trees but only because we are in the south and no matter what the time of year, we have bugs galore. Also it will probably be a pure squirrel feeder for us! Still, if this is something you can do, give it a try. Our birds are loving the peanut butter food.

Some of the backyard birds visiting our peanut butter spread are: wrens, nuthatches, chickadees, downy woodpecker, red bellied woodpecker, pine warbler and a hermit thrush.

Wild Bills Battery Operated Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder Review

We do like the Wild Bill’s bird feeder an recommend it. Now, we give it a good review probably not for the common reason but instead because it is just a great hopper design. The Wild Bill’s bird feeder is what we have in our own backyards as a primary hopper feeder, and we fill it with black oil sunflower. While the feeder itself is promoted as being a battery operated squirrel proof design, what you aren’t told is that with the circular design, you tend to get a lot of birds perching on it at once. They can’t really see each other and it cuts down on the bickering and jostling that happens at feeding stations.

Also, it holds 10lbs of seed. This is a great feature! If you have busy feeding stations or are just a busy person - aren’t we all - you spend far less time refilling feeders when you use a large capacity model. The cone shaped design goes a long way to keep the seed dry, too. Even when it rains really hard here the seed in this feeder does not get wet. We clean our Wild Bill’s bird feeder far less than we do our others.

As far as the squirrel proof feature, the battery operated zap works like a charm. It does not hurt the squirrels either, but they surely don’t care for it. Our personal Wild Bills is not even used in this manner as we have it squirrel baffled in other ways, but we gave one of these to our Grandmother who lives in an apartment and has major squirrel trouble. Well she did anyway, she doesn’t any more. Our Grandma gets tickled to bits when a squirrel gets a little zap. We thin she has it out for them since they kept the birds from her feeders for so long, but that’s another story. One thing you need to watch out for is the batteries. If the batteries go dead, you have no way of knowing until you see a squirrel on your feeder. We have found the batteries last and recommend simply using re-chargeable. This hasn’t been a problem for Grandma!

See more about the Wild Bills Battery Operated Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder or visit our selection of Squirrel Proof Bird Feeders.

Sky Cafe hopper style bird feeder review:

Simply put, this is a great bird feeder. There are several good features about it but our favorite is the fact that it is has larger capacity hopper that can hold up to ten lbs of seed. Also, since the reservoir is clear, you can easily see when the feeder needs to be re-filled. If you have been a backyard bird watcher for some time, you’ll know how much easier these two issues make your hobby! If you are new to bird watching, take these features into consideration.

The tray is wide enough to suit larger birds such as cardinals, which is a benefit.  The top is squirrel proof due to it’s shape. Any squirrel approaching from above will slide off - the distance from the hanging chain an anything a squirrel can reach is too far. The sky cafe is designed as a hanging feeder so take into consideration placement if you intend it for a squirrel proof feeder. It will still need to be placed far enough away from spots squirrels can’t jump from the sides or below. It is only squirrel proof from the top. It may be pole mounted but requires an adapter kit.

The sky cafe comes with different color roof options - red, clear, blue or green. We have found it to be very weather resistant and good for keeping bird food dry in foul weather. We recommend feeding black oil in it, a mix with a smaller seed will just spill out, as is the case with most hoppers.

Really, we have no negative points about the sky cafe. If you have the right spot for it, it is a great bird feeder. If you only have one bird feeder, it’s a best pick. The sky cafe with BOSS is going to attract and suit a large variety of songbirds. Please visit our hopper bird feeders page for a larger selection, including the sky cafe with different color roofs or find out more about the sky cafe hopper bird feeder.

Here is a new product for backyard bird watchers that we think we are just going to have to buy for ourselves. It’s a wire mesh bird feeder made of stainless steel and has a porcelain roof. The roof is extra wide to help protect seeds or peanuts against weather. The overall design of this bird feeder is just beautiful! And it looks like a feeder that is not only pretty, but the birds can actually use it, and birders can actually clean it. Now that combo can be hard to come by.  The feeder features attractive ring, circle perches around the hopper.

You can use this wire feeder for sunflower seeds, nuggets or peanuts. We think it will be the perfect peanut feeder. Our current peanut feeder is similar and also stainless steel, which is a material we can recommend. It holds up great for years.  If you have one, let us know what you think, good or bad.  It’s just so attractive! See more wire mesh bird feeders.

fruit bird feeders

A Fruit Feeder provides food in your backyard habitat which appeals to those birds who eat primarily or only fruits and berries. Some birds will not visit your bird feeder for seeds at all, but will stop by to enjoy an apple or orange. Fruit eating birds such as robins, waxwings, bluebirds, and mockingbirds rarely will eat birdseed, but you may be able to attract them to stay and nest in your backyard by including a food source designed just for them.

There are specially designed fruit feeders which will hold chunks of fruit such as halved apples, pears or oranges, or you may use a platform feeder to include smaller bits like raisins, currents, cherries, blueberries or pieces of cut up fruit.

One of our favorite fruits to leave out for the birds is raisins and currants soaked in water overnight. Place them on a table feeder or Hanging Platform Feeder and see what shows up. You may also blends with a dried fruit mixture. Another option is to use a dehydrator to make your own dried fruit mixes which is particularly effective in the summer months when the weather is too hot to leave fresh fruit out at your feeding stations because it may spoil too quickly.

Oranges are another effective fruit to attract songbirds with. To attract orioles and tanagers, skewer halved oranges on a spike near your other feeders or provide nectar feeders. Feeders made specifically for this purpose are handy because they allow fruit eating birds a separate area to feed from which is away from activity of seed eating birds.

Birds will also eat vegetables like tomatoes, green peppers, squash and green beans.

Melon rinds or scraped insides of cantaloupe or honeydew is also a treat. Be sure to put out the seeds! Shop for fruit bird food at Fruit Bird Foods or a large selection of fruit feeders at Fruit and Berry Wild Bird Feeders.

Hummingbird Feeder Perches Bad for Birds?

We have listened to the “perches on hummer feeders are bad and can kill hummingbirds” story. The theory is that hummers would land on a feeder perch in the cool early morning and drink the cold morning temperature nectar from the feeder and this jolt of coldness would cause them to go into torpor,. A torpor is a trance-like state in which body functions slow drastically to economize energy. A torpor is a state several species of hummers practice. Some hummers were witnessed hanging upside down from their perches, while others fell down to the ground and were at the mercy of predators. It has been theorized that the hummers were not moving around and as a result, did not produce enough body heat while sitting to feed, therefore they succumbed to the cold. Consequently perches became a danger should be removed in order to force the birds to hover and produce body heat.

So far there is no scientific grounds to support this theory. Hummingbirds survive in exceedingly cold weather naturally in a state of torpor, so they may be in their natural state on a especially cold morning. Or, while at a feeder, hummingbirds can be stung by bees or wasps, or wounded in the fighting which will happen at busy nectar feeding stations. We have seen birds knock each other totally out of the air. There are several alternative reasons why a hummer may “pass out” at a bird feeder. Our feeders continue to have perches. In our yards, the hummingbird feeders are tiny battle zones. While we know that some hummers will feed peacefully with others this just hasn’t been the case with our personal experience in general. From what we have observed, perches seems to help keep the peace at war like stations. More than one hummer will land on a feeder with perches and eat in an uneasy peace, whereas we have not seen multiple birds hover and be willing to share food. We will keep our perches until there is some evidence which backs up the torpor theory.

Shop for Hummingbird feeders at Hummingbird Feeders or food for the little gems at Pre-Made Hummingbird Food and Nectar Concentrate.

Bee & Ant Problems at Hummingbird Feeders

Ants and Crawling Bug Problems

If your hummingbird feeder is being visited by ants and bees and chasing away hummers, you will require some type of ant traps or ant guard. Typically these are small dishes or cups of water to can suspend above the feeder which work as a barrier, creating a moat of water between the wire or hook the feeder is hung by, and the feeder itself. This acts to cut off the ant’s access to the feeder. Ants will make a steady line up to a feeder without an ant trap because feeding port holes are easily accessible to them. Many hummingbird nectar feeders now come with built in ant guards but if your current feeder does not have one, these moat guards they are available as an add-on accessory for existing feeders. It’s a very simple, inexpensive solution to crawling bug trouble. You can shop for a variety of different styles of ant and crawling bug moats here: Hummingbird Feeder Ant Guards

They come in decorative styles such as:

Decorative Ant Water Guard

or the more purely functional styles such as:

Hummingbird Feeder Ant Moat Clear

These water filled moats are very effective in stopping crawling bugs from making a path straight to a feeder. One thing that we do find at our own hummingbird stations is that smaller songbirds - particularly chickadees, titmice and finches - love to hang on the wire and drink from the moats. We’ve found the larger ant cups such as pictured above, as opposed to the smaller built in and cups that come with many styles of feeders, to be an advantage. The smaller songbirds will often drink all of the water from the small cups between nectar changes therefore we sometimes use the extra larger moats. We have plenty of bird baths and water around, but our little birds seem to prefer prefer a drink from something their own size. The photo to the left was taken from our back deck.

Wasps, Bees and Flying Insects

We have found in our own gardens that bees prefer yellow. Now maybe there is some scientific backup to this, we do not know. Maybe it’s complete hooey on our part and only occurring in our backyards. The bees in our backyard annoy our yellow hummingbird nectar feeders quite a bit more than our feeders which are red. They are also more probable to be a bother at a gravity style feeder over a saucer or dish style because the nectar is right up to the feeding port and can be easily accessed by a bee. however, there are all sorts of bee guards for this which can be added to feeders. Bee guards form small cages over the actual feeding port itself which the bee can not climb or reach past. Often these bee guards are yellow, but if the bee lands and only finds yellow plastic within it’s reach, there is nothing of interest so it simply flies away.

This is a classic gravity style, or inverted bottle hummingbird feeder which has bee and wasp guards attached:

Inverted Bottle Hummingbird Feeder

If you already own a hummingbird feeder which does not have the attached bee wasp guards, they can be purchased separately:

Hummingbird Feeder Wasp Bee Guards

For us, our favorite hummingbird feeder is the dish, or saucer style. These feature the nectar reservoir below the feeding ports, therefore the nectar isn’t accessible to bees or wasps. The insects simply can not reach far enough into the dish to get to the nectar. Also, the nectar isn’t touching any seams where bees can feed from. This also makes them dripless. Ant guards are frequently built into a dish or saucer style hummingbird feeder.

Aspects HummZinger Fancy

It’s tough to see from the above photo, but there is a small cup at the base of the hanger post which you can fill with water to stop ants from crawling to the nectar. The nectar level is too far down the reservoir for bees to reach. You can shop for a large assortment of saucer, gravity and gorgeous decorative hummingbird feeders at Hummingbird Feeder Store or for foods at Pre-Made Hummingbird Food and Nectar Concentrate.

Which species of backyard birds eat fruits & berries. Try these in your feeders for something different!

• Apples, baked - bluebirds, American robins.
• Apples – One of our favorite foods for fruit and berry eating birds. It’s easy and effective. Over 45 species of birds will eat apples. Yellow breasted chat, common flickers, house finch, blue jay, mockingbirds, orioles, American robin, sparrow white crowned, thrasher curve billed, thrush hermit, orange crowned warbler orange crowned, waxwing cedar, hairy woodpecker, cactus wren.
• Blueberries - Over 80 species of birds eat blueberries including American robins, black-capped chickadees, common flickers, grackles, house sparrows, kingbird, many species of orioles, towhees, and tufted titmice.
• Bananas - indigo bunting, chat yellow breasted, house finch, gray jay, mockingbirds, starlings, tanager western, warbler Tennessee, hairy woodpecker, Carolina wren.
• Cantaloupe seeds – nuthatch white breasted, nuthatch red breasted, house sparrow.
• Cherries - American robins, blackbirds, black headed grosbeaks, bluebirds, blue jays, gray catbirds, cedar waxwings, common flickers, downy woodpeckers, grackles, hairy woodpeckers, hermit thrushes, house finches, house sparrows, Lewis woodpeckers, northern cardinals, northern mockingbirds, northern orioles, pine grosbeaks, red headed woodpeckers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ruffed grouse, song sparrows, stellar jays, Townsend’s solitares, western tanagers, other tanagers, white crowned sparrows, white throated sparrows, wood thrushes.
• Crabapples frozen - Purple, American robin, cedar waxwing.
• Grapes – Over 90 species of birds eat grapes. American robin, bluebirds, blue jay, cedar waxwing, gray catbird, house finch, evening grosbeaks, grosbeak black headed, grosbeak rose breasted, gray jay, mockingbird, magpies, northern cardinals, hooded oriole, oriole northern Baltimore, scott’s oriole, stellar jays, western tanager, Carolina thrasher, brown thrasher, Swainson’s thrush, towhees, warblers, acorn woodpeckers and yellow-billed cuckoos.
• Oranges – catbird gray, doves, mockingbirds, oriole northern Baltimore, tanager scarlet, tanager summer, tanager western, thrasher brown, warbler yellow rumped myrtle, woodpecker red bellied.
• Plums - American robins, blackbirds, black headed grosbeaks, bluebirds, blue jays, gray catbirds, cedar waxwings, common flickers, downy woodpeckers, grackles, hairy woodpeckers, hermit thrushes, house finches, house sparrows, Lewis woodpeckers, northern cardinals, northern mockingbirds, northern orioles, pine grosbeaks, red headed woodpeckers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ruffed grouse, song sparrows, stellar jays, Townsend’s solitares, western tanagers, other tanagers, white crowned sparrows, white throated sparrows, wood thrushes.
• Pumpkin seeds – chickadee, junco dark eyed, nuthatch white breasted, sparrow American tree, warbler yellow rumped.
• Raspberries & Blackberries - Over 140 species of birds eat them including American robins, blue jays, common flickers, fox sparrows, grackles, house sparrows, orchard orioles, red headed woodpeckers, tufted titmice, wood thrush, northern cardinals, northern mockingbirds, northern orioles, rose-breasted grosbeak, song sparrows and white throated sparrows.
• Strawberries – bluebirds, gray catbird, cedar waxwings, common flickers, grosbeak black headed, grosbeak rose breasted, jay blue, magpies, mockingbirds, robin American, Quail bobwhite, towhees, wood thrush.
• Watermelon rind – purple finch, grosbeaks, mockingbird, oriole hooded, warblers.

Shop online for fruit bird food at Fruit and Berry Backyard Birds Food or special fruit bird feeders at Fruit and Berry Wild Bird Feeders.