Our backyard birder’s winter checklist focuses on three simple ways you can help your backyard birds get through winter.
By focusing our backyard birder’s winter checklist on three fundamentals, you can support your songbirds all winter long by providing critical needs, while keeping it easy for you to sustain and maintain. We’re keeping this simple: Focus on providing three fundamental needs.
Most important of all, be prepared to provide them consistently—even during the worst winter weather:
- Fresh, high-calorie food in clean feeders
- Ice-free water source
- Clean bird houses (Remove previous nesting debris)
Helping your birds survive and thrive comes with rewards for all! Seeing healthy birds frequent your feeders and baths each day will be a joy. Your backyard birds can help you get through this winter, too!!
Backyard Birder’s Winter Checklist #1
Offer fresh, high-calorie food in clean feeders.
The most important thing you need to know about feeding wild birds during winter: It’s critical to maximize nutrition in every feeding opportunity.
Provide high calorie seeds and suet with essential protein, fat and carbohydrates.
First of all, food quality directly affects birds’ ability to survive cold weather. Keeping warm takes extra calories! With fast-acting metabolisms, birds must be efficient eaters. For survival, they absolutely must maximize each and every opportunity for nourishment. See why this is important in resource section: Quality food in clean feeders matters!!
Second, if your feeders are popular, you may need to check them more frequently for refilling.
Checklist Item #1a for all seasons, but especially winter: Please, never, ever, feed bread to birds.
Please remind your friends and family to never feed bread to birds. Bread has ZERO nutrition while filling birds’ stomachs, robbing them of their best chance of not freezing to death.
Find the facts here: Bread is Bad for Birds
Backyard Birder’s Winter Checklist #2
Maintain an ice-free water source
Birds Need Water All Year Round for Drinking and Bathing. Even in Winter!
Keep bird baths from freezing over and make this easy for yourself:
Get a heated bird bath or add a deicer.
Water is second on our list only by default, as it is equally important as number one! We can never, ever, say it enough: Water is critical year round for wild birds to drink and bathe. During freezing temperatures, your heated bird bath might just be the only accessible, unfrozen source of water nearby for your backyard birds.
Your bird bath doesn’t have to be fancy or heated up as warm as you like your hot tub, the water just needs to be fresh and accessible. In other words, your backyard birds will appreciate any clean water that’s not frozen over!
For more information about wild birds and water, see our Resource Page, Birds, Water and Winter.
Backyard Birder’s Winter Checklist #3
Clear nesting debris from your bird houses.
Your bird house offers songbirds welcome shelter from freezing weather.
And last but not least, offer your backyard birds shelter. Yes! Put up bird houses now, it’s not too early. Get previously occupied bird houses ready by clearing out nesting debris.
For reasons why your winter bird house can make a difference for your backyard birds, see our blog post: Bird houses offer sanctuary for songbirds during winter weather.
Your bird houses offer songbirds, like Bluebirds, Chickadees, Titmice and Carolina Wrens (among others), safe places to keep warm and roost when weather is extreme. Again, make sure you’ve removed all previous nest debris.
Learn more in our Resource pages: Shelter Birds During Winter in Your Bird Houses
Bonus: Even if birds aren’t using your houses, they’re making note of their locations ahead of nesting season. Especially early nesters like Bluebirds. (It won’t be long!) Go ahead and put up the new bird house you got for Christmas!
If you don’t have a bird house, see our guide with tips on how to choose, place and maintain bird houses in our Resources. Or make it really easy for yourself! Just stop by the store and we’ll give you our best (always free!) advice.
Go the extra step by planting a bird-friendly, winter garden! Grow native plants that support birds during winter. See an overview on Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s page ‘Bird Friendly Winter Gardens‘.
Food + Water + Shelter = Habitat!
In summary, by providing your birds, quality food, un-frozen water and opportunities for respite from winter weather, your backyard now has the three simple elements that define a ‘micro-habitat’! Find out more about how important our backyard micro-habitats are, and the contribution each little backyard patch makes to the overall well-being of wild birds. See our Habitat resources in the top menu.
