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.

Three things you can do right now to help your backyard birds survive e extreme cold and heavy snow.

Extreme Winter Checklist for Backyard Birders

January 21, 2026

The Backyard Birder’s Extreme Winter Checklist

Here are three things you can do RIGHT NOW to help your backyard birds survive extreme winter weather.
Please share.

1. Provide Best Possible Nutrition

Quality food with high fat seeds, suet and nuts is essential.  Food quality directly affects a wild bird’s ability to stay warm and survive.

Check feeder levels more frequently.

No Bread!!! Ever. EVER! Remind everyone you know (and ask them to teach their children and grandchildren!) that bread has ZERO nutrition for wild birds. A small bird will freeze to death overnight with a stomach full of empty-calorie bread crumbs. Empty calories are lost nourishment!  Send bread feeders to ‘Why Quality Food Matters’ and in our website’s Resources section.

Carolina Wren enjoying Black Oil Sunflower Seed and Suet from a backyard feeder.

2. Maintain an Ice-free Water Source

Water is critical.  We can’t stress this enough. All birds require water for drinking and bathing — especially in winter for preening. Preening keeps feathers working properly to insulate birds from the cold.

If your bird bath is concrete or ceramic, prevent cracking (and protect your investment!). Place a de-icer in your bird bath top or substitute with a winter-proof bath––One that is sturdy plastic, metal or one that has a heater built in.

Even a shallow, planter saucer will work great. Without a heater, you’ll need to check for freezing over often. Be careful not to crack it by whacking it to get the ice out. Just pour hot water over it and let it melt.

Your water source doesn’t need to be fancy, just un-frozen!   A consistent, ice-free water source is also an opportunity to attract wild birds you never see at feeders! 

3. Check Your Bird Houses

Then, also make sure your bird houses are cleaned out and accessible for overnight roosting. They literally provide shelter from the storm for birds huddling together.Here’s an interesting article from Cornell Lab about how birds help each other through extreme cold. 

Visit our  ‘Wild Birds, Winter and Water’ page for more info on how to establish and maintain a winter water source. Or, just drop in the store and tell us about your backyard and budget. We’ll help you find the best and most convenient solution for you and your birds.

Thank you for helping your backyard birds through this extreme winter weather! Every effort makes a difference and you will be rewarded with their joyous presence in your life. 

Happy Birding, Stay Warm!
Debi & Mike Klein and The Backyard Naturalist Team

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