10 feeder birds to attract this winter

Sure, these birds have lost their sexy, bright yellow breeding colours, but winter is still a great time to spot them. Left to their own devices, American goldfinches eat natural seeds. Try sunflower seeds or nyjer to attract them to your feeder.

These bold little birds are prone to landing on your hand. Humans mean food! They go for suet, safflower seeds, and peanut butter. Heck, who doesn’t?

Jays have good memories; they’ll stash food in natural hiding spots in the fall in preparation for winter, then return to the caches when need be. Still, they’ll benefit from feeder peanuts, corn, seed mixes, and sugar water.

Who wins the Handsomeness Award? This guy! (Dark-eyed juncos really do have dreamy dark eyes.) They’re very common feeder birds; to attract them, try millet, cracked corn, sunflower seeds, and nyjer. Then take lots of pictures of them.

The littlest of our woodpeckers, downies will eat everything from bugs to sap to poison ivy. But you can’t put that stuff in your birdfeeder, so try suet, seed mixes, or fruits.

Thanks to their powerful—and kind of huge—beaks, these birds can crack through almost any wild seed or fruit pit. But at the winter feeder, they go crazy for sunflower seeds. Greedy grosbeaks.

The downy’s larger, slightly shaggier cousin has a strong enough bill to drill into the toughest of bark and get at tasty, tasty insects. But hairy woodpeckers will also chow down on the same kinds of feeder foods as their downy woodpecker cousins.

These sadly-singing birds—it’s “mourning” dove, not “morning” dove—eat thistle, knotweed, spurge, ragweed, and other plants that sound, frankly, disgusting. (Maybe that’s why mourning doves are so unhappy.) At your birdfeeder, they’ll consume sunflower and safflower seeds, millet, and cracked corn.

Red-breasted nuthatch These colourful little birds are prone to grabbing seeds then flapping away to eat them somewhere else. They also love peanut butter, and jelly. That is, separately. Not together in a sandwich.

For a nuthatch, these birds are large, and about 15 cm longer than a black-capped chickadee. If you put out peanuts, make sure they’re hulled. Unlike some other birds, they may turn up their noses—er, beaks—at having to go through the shell.