Feeding neighborhood birds

Here are some suggestions & oberservations I wrote while living in Utah. More comprehensive information on this subject can be found at Cornell. Also: KEEP YOUR CAT IN!!!

Here is what and how I fed the birds that came to my home while I was living in Utah:

For Magpies and Jays and Starlings:

Wayne's Dog Food - "bite" size - 40 lb. bags. Tracy Aviary, a public aviary in Salt Lake City, feeds this same food to their birds. Placed in ground feeders.

Generic cat foot in 20lb bags.

In-the-shell unsalted roasted peanuts. Some people feed raw peanuts but I think roasted ones have less of a chance of disease.

Peanut Butter mixed with corn meal. Note that Mark Stackhouse, an educator at Tracy Aviary, claimed at it's ok to feed straight peanut butter to wild birds, and that the chocking story is unfounded.

For all:

Black Oil Sunflower - put in hanging feeders and ground feeders.

Commercial wild bird food - the kind with a bunch of millet & other seed - placed mainly in a handing feeder. Also placed a bit in ground feeders.

Chicken scratch mix (cracked corn and wheat and other) - purchased from a local farm store. Put in ground feeders and sometimes in the horizontal hanging feeder.

Description of feeders:

Ground feeders - rectangular and square, wood, about 1 foot off the ground with legs. Water placed in large plastic bowls purchased from a "Dollar" store.

Hanging feeders - traditional hopper feeder used for the Commercial wild bird seed (millet, etc.). Hanging vertical rectangle with small holes (essentially a tube feeder made out of wood) - used for black oil sunflower. Hanging horizontal wood shallow bucket type feeder - about 10 feet off the ground hanging in a tree - for cat or dog foot and/or seed.

Feeders in a tree hut: alternatively black oil sunflower. Water placed in same type of plastic bowls used on ground. During the winter in the water I use a water defroster device I purchased from a local farm store.

In my front yard I had a plastic baby bathing container. Some local ducks liked to use it for bathing.

Amount I spent per month feeding neighborhood birds in Utah: $0 to $120.

If you have some suggestions about my feeding practices, feel free to email me at:
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