How to best support wild birds during cold weather: The Backyard Naturalist's Winter Checklist for Backyard Birding: Focus on the Fundamentals and provide best quality.

Supporting Wild Birds During Winter, Our Backyard Birders’ Checklist

January 5, 2022

Help your backyard birds get through winter by focusing on fundamentals

Here’s our winter checklist for backyard birders and supporting wild birds in Winter. We’re keeping this simple: Focus on providing three fundamental needs. Be prepared to provide them consistently—even during the worst winter weather!

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!!

Food – Feeding Wild Birds During Winter

Maximize nutrition in your feeders.
Provide high calorie seeds and suet with essential protein, fat and carbohydrates.

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. Quality food in clean feeders matters!! You may also need to check feeders more frequently for refilling.

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

Birds Need Water All Year Round for Drinking and Bathing. Even in Winter!

Keep bird baths from freezing over.
Get heated bird baths or add deicers.

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.
See our website: Birds, Water and Winter

Your Bird House is Welcome Shelter from Freezing Winter Weather

Have bird houses up now.
Bird houses offer sanctuary for songbirds during winter weather.

Yes! 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. Be sure you’ve removed all previous nest debris.
Learn more: Shelter Birds During Winter in Your Bird HousesBonus: 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!)

We hope you and your families are well.  Thank you for supporting wild birds.  Your continuing support of our efforts here at the store means the world to us.

Happy Winter Birding!
Debi & Mike Klein and The Backyard Naturalist Team

Food + Water + Shelter = Habitat!

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.

Do less yard work this Fall! Goldfinches are happy to deadhead your flowers for you.

Feeder Slowdown Every Fall

October 9, 2025

Feeder activity is down and everyone’s asking: “Where are my birds?”

You’re not alone in asking this question! Everyone is seeing fewer birds at their feeders right now.

Don’t worry! A slowdown is normal for this time of year and temporary. Traffic at your feeder is likely to start picking up as we get further into Autumn. However, your fresh bath continues to be necessary for all wild birds whether seed-eater or non-seed-eater!

Hummingbird migrants are still coming through so keep feeders filled and nectar fresh. Keep them up until two weeks after your last sighting. (Feeders do not keep Hummingbirds from migrating!)

There are several factors overlapping right now to explain why your feeders aren’t attracting as many birds. It’s all about timing and seasonal events.+

Why this is normal:

  • October brings a bounty of natural food sources.
    It’s harvest time! We’ve entered the peak of Nature’s food production. Plants are going to seed and berries are still abundant. Insects have not yet gone dormant. Your birds are very happily eating food provided by natural habitats and the native plants and insects in your garden.This year, because we’ve had a recent long stretch of warm, dry weather, it’s possible there is even more food than usual.
  • Broods have dispersed.
    All those juvenile birds are now winging their way alone and feeding independently. If you’re missing their squeaky voices and enthusiasm at your feeders, you’re not alone!
  • Migration.
    Some of our favorite birds have quietly left the area, heading south to their winter homes. It’s always sad to see them go, but this year we are feeling even more bereft.

How we can help sustain wild bird populations, at home and at work:

  • Create and maintain micro-habitats in our yards, which includes three simple elements, no matter the scale: Food, Water, Shelter. See our habitat resource pages for more info.
  • Put decals on the outside of our windows.
    It’s estimated that up to a billion wild birds per year die after crashing into glass. See The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s recommendations ‘Why Birds Hit Windows—and How You Can Help Prevent It’.
  • Keep our cats indoors.
    The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center lists this as the No. 1 human-caused reason for the loss of birds, aside from habitat loss.

Backyard by backyard, all our micro-habitats are helping to make a difference.

Thank you for supporting our efforts here at the store, but most of all, thank you for supporting wild birds. 

Debi, Mike and The Backyard Naturalist Team

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