Peanuts with Lard---Yum!

Well maybe not so tasty to me....but to the wild birds Yum!

Today I will make up some "suet" to put into my suet feeder outside. We have finally had a freeze---for better or worse.
Of course it's a late one since ours is suppose to be around the middle of October, but that is to be expected after the freaky weather we have been having over the past year or so.

I don't really feed the birds all year long but since we have so many beauties I do like to help them out in the winter. Especially after this year with the lower amounts of food that we notice are available after our unusual Easter freeze and then the drought. Sitings of bears are occurring in our area, which is odd, so we will have to be particularly careful this year. The bears are hungry though and I would help feed them if I could---but I know better than to do that. All I would create is a problem. (I do hope they stay away as I wouldn't want my sheep or guard dog injured).

So, as I was saying, today I will mix up some homemade suet and put it out for the birds. There are numerous sites with homemade suet mixes (some don't even use suet) but check out the Sialis link for many many recipes all "under one roof". It's a bluebird site---and a very good one---but the recipes work for any species of bird that eats suet type food. Another link is this Wildbirds forever site. The have a nice little link section to some of the more common birds you will see at a suet feeder.

We have the two birds shown in the pictures above come regularly throughout the year to our yard. I stole these pictures off of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology web site. It's a nice site to check out and look up many birds and see facts and hear their calls. The one with red on his head is a downy woodpecker and the other---standing upside down---is a nuthatch. The little nuthatch that called our yard home this year made his nest in our peach tree this spring. Unfortunately for him he didn't think through how often we would walk by this tree and ended up having to scold us incessantly each day. The main problem was that the tree he chose is at the corner of our garden and near our chicken coop---so of course we were there very very frequently :-)


So, now that we have had frost in most of the south AND snow up north---don't forget your little feathered friends. They can always use a bit of help when it's really really cold.