It’s the time of year to start thinking about feeding the baby birds that are visiting our gardens and feeders!
During spring and early summer you’ll see fledglings, usually in small groups. It’s a great time of year to offer bird food, whether you’re just starting out or you are a regular feeder already.
It is often thought that small birds cant judge the size of their meal and can choke of large pieces of food, it’s always a good idea to minimise this risk completely by offering out small seeds or suet products that can be pecked at.
Here are some recommendations for fledgling friendly, spring time bird foods:
Kibbled Peanuts are the perfect size for fledglings and other small garden birds. They are a great source of fat and protein. They can be offered on their own or are perfect to mix with seed. As they won’t grow or sprout they’re also ideal for sprinkling on the ground for young ground feeding birds. (The RSPB recommends avoiding whole peanuts during fledgling season.)
Live mealworms are a fantastic, natural source of wild bird food packed with an abundance of fat (40%) and protein (over 40%). They are ideal for encouraging natural feeding behaviour in all kinds of wild birds but especially for ground feeding birds like Robins, Blackbirds, Chaffinches, Wagtails, and Thrushes.
Suet pellets are packed with fats they are a great high energy birdfood for all year round, but especially now, when the little ones start to emerge in the spring. You can feed them on their own or add them to a mix to be enjoyed by all birds that visit your garden.
Sunflower heart chips are a smaller alternative to whole sunflower hearts and are packed with the same healthy nutrients as their whole counterparts. Fledglings, as well as birds with small or soft beaks, can break through and digest them easier making them ideal for smaller birds.
It is important to provide enough food for the first few months of the fledglings life!
Some of my favourite places to get bird food are:
Happy Beaks – I purchase all of my suet pellets and sunflower hearts from here! Use my code HBFRY at checkout or click this link —-> https://www.happybeaks.co.uk/referral/HBFRY
Ivel Valley – Provides the best waste-free seed mix! —-> https://www.ivelvalleybirdfood.co.uk/
A Little Bird Company – Has a fantastic seed mix for fledglings which includes kibbled peanuts, sunflower heart chips etc —-> http://www.alittlebirdcompany.co.uk/
Peckamix – where you can make your own seed mix! You choose your own ingredients and the percentage of each! —-> https://www.peckamix.co.uk/mixyourown
Young Naturalist: Izzy Fry 