Bird food in winter: are peanuts useful for birds?

Due to their high fat content, nuts are ideal winter food. This applies primarily to native nut species, but many wonder whether other nuts, such as peanuts, are suitable foods for birds. Not every food is suitable for every type of bird. Therefore, peanuts are conditionally suitable bird food and it is important to offer the birds as wide a range of feed as possible, which should also include various nuts. But are peanuts suitable as bird food in winter?

Bird seed in winter

Basically, birds that are fed in winter are divided into two different categories, soft-eater and grain-eater. Soft eaters prefer soft food such as insects or wild fruits. Peanuts are completely unsuitable for this group. Are useful peanuts exclusively for grain eaters.

Grain eaters can already be recognized by the shape of their beaks. Compared to soft-eaters, grain-eaters have a rather short but broad and powerful beak. This allows you to crack the grains well and also peel them. Sometimes grain-eater and soft-eater have a food plate that overlaps, as in the form of wild fruits, but grain-eater prefer seeds.

The grain eaters who spend the winter here include:

• House sparrow
• woodpecker
• Titmouse
• finch
• nuthatch
• bullfinch
• Bunting
• Green compact
• goldfinch
• siskin
• robin

Wild pigeons are also grain eaters, but they are not welcome guests at bird feeders. they are Carriers of disease and should therefore not be fed if possible so that their population is not unnaturally increased.
Granivores are the group of birds that can also be fed peanuts. However, you should not only feed peanuts, which are a rich source of protein and fats, but represent a one-sided source of food.

Peanuts as bird seed

If you want to offer the peanut as part of the bird food, you should do so correctly. There are occasional feed mixes with peanuts on the market, but these are often suitable for a limited number of grain eaters. To ensure that the peanut is a source of food for as many of the bird species as possible, the peanut should never be fed whole. It should always be about Peanut Broken Act. Although the peanut can also be offered with the shell, in this case it is usually the second choice and nuts without shell are preferred.

tip: The peanut can be part of birdseed mixes or as a single feed in addition to other seeds and grains.

Peanut birdseed can be placed in conventional bird feeders or feeders. On peanut feed in Networks you should, however waive. Not only can the nets be blown by the wind when they are empty and end up in nature as plastic waste, the birds can also get tangled up in them. The emptier the net, the greater the risk that their claws will get tangled in it.

If there is no other option than to buy the peanut food online, the food should be removed from the network beforehand. There are now suitable dispensers into which the feed from the nets can be transferred. Occasionally, such food is also sold in larger quantities and can then be transferred to the dispenser in portions.

Make birdseed from peanuts yourself

Offering peanut feed as part of winter feeding makes sense. But the feed is not always available locally in stores. As an alternative to finished products, you can also make peanut birdseed yourself. To do this, buy suitable peanuts in stores. When buying, however, you have to pay attention to a few things so that the peanut does not become a danger. The purchased peanuts must have the following properties:

• unsalted
• unroasted
• heated for a maximum of briefly
• no mold
• if possible organically grown

Above all, it is important to ensure that the raw materials purchased completely without salt are and not roasted became. Roasting makes the peanut rancid faster if it comes into contact with oxygen after opening the packaging. Rancid nuts can cause dangerous digestive problems in birds. Moldy food can even be a reason the animals die. It is therefore important to ensure high quality when selecting the raw materials.

You can then roughly chop the nuts. To do this, first put the peeled nuts in a plastic bag and then roughly smash them with the rolling pin. So you can already put the kernels in a bird feeder. However, it is better to offer the peanut as part of a feed mix for grain eaters.

To do this, warm coconut oil or beef tallow in a saucepan. Then mix in the peanut curd and other grains. You then fill the whole thing into molds and hang it up with a string after it has cooled down. Small clay pots, for example, are suitable as containers.

Feed whole peanuts

The peanut as a whole is only suitable for a few birds, but they gratefully accept this food. Not infrequently, however, are they squirrelwho loot the birdhouses when whole nuts of any kind are fed. Therefore, if you primarily want to feed the birds, you should ensure that the peanut is offered whole in such a way that it is safe from other blackheads.

The jay specializes in cracking certain nuts. However, he rarely visits a bird feeder directly. This means that you should bring suitable forage close to its habitats. The peanut has a shell that the jays beak can crack. However, he does this calmly and therefore creates small depots with his food, where he then pans over them in peace.
For the jay, the food should preferably be offered in the area of ​​trees and not in a free-standing birdhouse. The risk that rodents will also get to the food is greater here, but this can be minimized by blocking off hanging devices.

As with other corn-eaters, you can make the food for the jay yourself. In this case, the effort is even significantly lower. This time you can buy the peanut food with a shell. Then thread the nuts one after the other on a thread. The peanut has a relatively soft shell that can be easily pierced with a thick needle.

tip: You can thread the nuts as a wreath, for example, and simply hang them on a branch.