Winter Birds Love Suet

BirdNote^®

Winter Birds Love Suet

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!
At this time of year, birds love fat!
    With a brilliant flash of its copper-red underwings, a flicker sails into the yard. [Northern Flicker’s “keeyr”] Just behind it wings a stubby-tailed Red-breasted Nuthatch [Red-breasted Nuthatch’s “yank-yank-yank”]. Now a couple of energetic Black-capped Chickadees dart in [Short burst of “dee-dee-dee” notes], and a Downy Woodpecker brings up the rear. [Downy Woodpecker call] What a burst of vitality on a chilly November morning.
    What’s the attraction? A cake of suet, suspended from a branch in a small wire feeder. Suet is beef fat, a high-energy food critical for birds’ survival in the colder months. With few insects available in winter, suet is an especially strong magnet for birds that eat a lot of bugs in the warmer months. It’s also great for birds with bills that are not adapted to opening seeds.
    Bird feeding suppliers now offer a wide array of processed suet cakes, some studded with berries or seeds. Perhaps a bird’s equivalent of a home-baked chocolate chip cookie. [Red-breasted Nuthatch’s “yank-yank-yank”]
    Come to our website, birdnote.org, for more on suet feeders. And hurry, because here come the jays. They love suet, too. [Steller’s Jay calls]
For BirdNote, I'm Mary McCann.    

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Bird audio provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Northern Flicker recorded by W.W.H. Gunn. Red-breasted Nuthatch call recorded by W.L. Hershberger. Black-capped Chickadee call by S.R. Pantle, call of a Steller’s Jay by G.A. Keller, and Downy Woodpecker [62757] call by W.W.H. Gunn.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2014 Tune In to Nature.org   November 2018/2019   Narrator: Mary McCann

ID#111407suetKPLU    feeder-04b