What to feed birds to attract them and keep them coming back to your garden

Plus 10 tips to keep garden birds as happy as possible

Niall Hatch of BirdWatch Ireland shares some tips to draw many species to your home

With spring in the air, there’s nothing nicer than hearing birdsong outside your window. Ireland is home to a broad variety of birds, from house sparrows to blue tits, and it is easy to attract them to your garden.

Supermarkets and garden centres offer a large variety of seeds that can attract birds, with peanuts, sunflower seeds and nyjer seeds among the most popular choices, as well as the wire or plastic feeders they can be placed into. Niall Hatch of BirdWatch Ireland says these seeds and feeding tools are great at drawing many species to your home.  “These feeders can be suspended from tree branches or bird tables, where they prove extremely popular with such garden favourites as blue tits, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches and siskins,” he says. 

Mr Hatch says other foods can also be offered to birds to encourage a broad range of species to visit. “Apples, whether speared on branches or simply left on the lawn, are another excellent source of food, particularly for blackbirds and fellow members of the thrush family, as well as for blackcaps,” he says.

“Berries, such as those of rowan and cotoneaster, are also popular with a wide range of species, and may even attract a flock of waxwings, an exceptionally flamboyant-looking migrant from northern Europe.” 

In addition, Mr Hatch recommends adding a mixture of plants with berries to your garden if possible as these will "help to provide a reliable source of food for fruit-eating birds for years to come,” he says, as well as offering shelter to other creatures. 

“It is also a good idea to provide berry and seed-rich plants in your garden, as these will attract a greater variety of birds and will help those species that do not visit bird tables or artificial feeders to make it through the winter. They can also provide shelter for insects which, in turn, will become food for insectivorous species, such as wrens and dunnocks.” 

 Some food scraps can be offered to birds too, and is a great way to cut down on food waste.

Kitchen scraps, such as bacon rinds, cheese (particularly loved by robins), raisins, melon seeds, stale fruitcake, cooked potato, oatmeal, fresh coconut and uncooked pastry also make welcome meals. 

“Please avoid any foods to which salt has been added, as this can be harmful to birds,” Mr Hatch advises.

He also recommends hanging out lumps of suet on strings or in plastic mesh vegetable containers, and offering meat trimmings, bacon rinds and other scraps, as fat is an important source of energy for birds. Poultry fat, however, should be avoided as it easily melts and fouls birds’ feathers.

“Melted fat can be poured over bread or cake scraps to make ‘bird cake’, and commercial ‘suet treats’ and ‘fat balls’ are also now widely available,” he adds.

Finally, birds require a constant supply of fresh drinking water too It is equally as important to ensure that your garden birds have a constant supply of fresh drinking water, “something that can be very hard for them to find when ponds and puddles are frozen over,” Mr Hatch says.

10 ways to attract birds to your garden all year 

Birds will use water both for drinking and bathing

There is no better way to learn about birds than to observe them in your own garden. Here are 10 handy hints from BirdWatch Ireland to help you keep your garden birds as happy as possible all year round.

1. Provide them with a good variety of different foods, such as peanuts, sunflower seeds, fruit and fat. The more different kinds of food you put out, the more bird species you will attract. Using special bird feeders will ensure that food can’t be spilled or wasted.

2. Some species, such as blue tits and chaffinches, will very happily come to feeders and bird tables. Other shyer species, such as dunnocks and wrens, generally will not, so try placing some food around the edges of your lawn, under bushes, etc. to attract these.

3. If you are feeding nuts and seed to the birds, make sure that they are fresh. Mouldy or rotten nuts and seeds can be very poisonous to birds.

4. In addition to food, provide water for the birds – they will use this both for drinking and bathing. You can use a purpose-built birdbath if you wish, but even an upturned dustbin lid half-filled with water is quite sufficient. Make sure to change the water regularly.

5. Plant a good mixture of bird-friendly plants in your garden. These will provide the birds with food, shelter and places to nest.

6. Don’t cut hedges during the breeding season. Apart from being against the law, the disturbance may cause the birds to leave their nests, and any chicks may be injured or killed.

7. Put up a nestbox in your garden. These can be attached to trees or, if there are no suitable trees, to a wall or other solid surface.

8. As much as possible, try to avoid using slug pellets and chemical insecticides. If birds eat any poisoned slugs, snails or insects, they too may be poisoned. Remember that birds are natural pest controllers.

9. If you have a cat, try to keep it indoors during the early morning and late evening, which are the most important feeding times for birds. When it is outdoors, put a bell on its collar to warn the birds of its approach.

10. Make sure that all feeders, bird tables and nestboxes are located in places where it is difficult for cats and other predators to get at them. Try to put all of these in relatively open places, so that the birds can see any predators approaching.