Most of our birds migrate south in winter so that their supply of nutritious insects is uninterrupted by the cold. Bird seed can fill the gap, but some species are unable to crack seeds or cannot obtain calories fast enough on a vegetarian diet.
Woodpeckers are chief among those that must find insects year-round, but kinglets, wrens, bluebirds, warblers, chickadees, titmice and nuthatches are also heavily reliant on animal foods. For all of these species, providing suet is essential to a complete feeder spread. On our coldest days, suet will save the lives of some less common feeder visitors, such as orange-crowned and pine warblers, and should double your species attendance overall.
Suet is beef fat from around the cow’s kidneys. Until recently, raw suet could be purchased easily at the supermarket meat counter and rendered on the stovetop or microwave into concentrated cakes at home. Unfortunately, it is no longer readily available unless you have a relationship with your butcher. Thus, prepared suet cakes must be bought from a local bird feed supplier.
Most commercial suet cakes are jam-packed with vegetable fillers, creating a dizzying variety on the store shelf. Do you want blueberries, cherries, multigrain flour or peanut butter with that beef fat? These added ingredients are a marketing ploy to create an eye-catching consumer product that will require replacement more quickly.
The entire point of putting out suet is to provide some animal fat to those species of birds which rely on insects. When plant matter is added back in, everybody wants a bite, and much of the actual suet ends up on the ground. Starlings and squirrels will usually ignore pure suet cakes, but will demolish the whole thing in an hour if is embedded with peanut butter or seeds.
Most local suppliers no longer include pure suet cakes among their offerings. It can be purchased inexpensively online, or you can ask your bird seed supplier to start carrying it. I recently ordered a whole case from the new bird feed store near Harris Teeter, called Backyard Birder Seed and Supply (backyardbirder.org).
Suet is a low-maintenance bird food because the simple wire mesh feeders will empty slowly and cannot be cleaned even you wanted to try. To optimize your experience with a suet feeder, place it near the house so that you can watch the many smaller species that stop by briefly for a quick nibble. Also, provide a perching opportunity for these smaller, skittish species by inserting a twig through each soft cake. Jamming two cakes into each feeder will put more of the suet close to the edge where smaller species can access it. The final touch is to hang it over a porch railing or other smooth surface so that the tiny scraps dropped by the powerful woodpeckers can drop to the small-beaked species below, such as warblers and kinglets.
Dan Cristol teaches in the Biology Department at the College of William and Mary and can be contacted at dacris@wm.edu. To discover local birding opportunities visit williamsburgbirdclub.org.
