WINTER 2001/VOLUME 15, NUMBER 1

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Project FeederWatch

FeederWatch is proud to announce The FeederWatcher's Guide to Bird Feeding. The book, based on interviews with hundreds of FeederWatchers, gives loads of feeding advice and contains more than 250 color photographs, many taken by FeederWatchers. Written by former FeederWatch coordinator Margaret Barker and popular field guide author Jack Griggs, the book beautifully illustrates and describes the birds most likely to visit feeders in each region, with current information on how best to attract birds. The book is a valuable resource for anyone who feeds birds. With permission from HarperCollins, the publisher, we've reprinted an excerpt of the book from the section that discusses the many ways to offer suet and peanut butter to backyard birds.

This beautiful new book illustrates and describes the birds most likely to visit feeders in each region, with current information on how to attract birds.

Suet brings in woodpeckers, nuthatches, and numerous other insect-eating birds. Starlings too, unfortunately, but they can be controlled by the way suet is offered. FeederWatchers report plenty of birds, such as Brown Creepers, that may never go to a suet feeder directly but are drawn to suet crumbs that fall beneath it. In Mississippi, one FeederWatcher counted Brown Thrashers, towhees, and Wood Thrushes among the ground-feeding suet opportunists at his site.

"It's not necessary to make suet," says Bob Coppernoll of rural central Illinois. He gets his suet from the local meat market. Raw suet is the fat surrounding kidneys in the loins of animals such as cows and sheep. It is the purest, hardest piece of fat on an animal and has a waxy look to it. "If you get the whole chunk from around the kidney of a cow, it will weigh about 15 to 20 pounds." All Bob does is slice it to fit his suet feeders, which are onion and potato sacks. He freezes what he doesn't use. "Just put the slabs in your feeders without other fuss, such as melting the suet or putting in seeds."

In the wild, birds can get suet and other animal fat from carcasses. Author and FeederWatcher Myrna Pearsman of Sylvan Lake, Alberta, once watched what happened to the carcass of a black mule deer that had died on nearby ice. "After the coyotes, the ravens came. Next to visit were the Bald Eagles, Gray Jays, and then the chickadees. At one point, the deer carcass looked like a great big bird feeder."

Susan Campbell in Whispering Pines, North Carolina, serves only venison suet in one of her feeders. "My husband hunts, and so we have a ready supply of venison. I have commercial suet cakes too, but my birds go for the venison suet first." A New York FeederWatcher/hunter found that venison suet attracted Pileated Woodpeckers. "They come to beef suet and suet cakes, but they seem to like the venison better. I also hang a large chunk of fatty rib section around a tree trunk. Once they discovered that, they were regulars."

Raw suet can be rendered and formed into cakes or other shapes. Rendered suet will keep fresh longer than raw suet, but in winter, the differences aren't often of practical importance. The main reason for making homemade suet cakes is to add other ingredients, such as nuts, grains, seeds, fruit, grape jelly, and eggshells. Some FeederWatchers like to mold rendered suet into balls, bells, or egg shapes with a loop of string and use them to ornament a tree.

A male Downy Woodpecker clings to a suet feeder. The tail-brace extension is designed to make it easy for woodpeckers to perch and eat their fill. photo by Steve and Dave Maslowski

Suet is preferred over other animal fat for making cakes "because it is easiest to work with, has less impurities, and forms harder cakes," says Karen Alstott, co-owner of C&S Products, the leading manufacturer of suet cakes. To render suet, chop or grind it and then melt it over medium heat. Strain it through cheesecloth to remove impurities and pour into pie pans, tinfoil baking cups, or pine cones, or when it cools, roll it into balls. The process is easy, but the smell of suet being rendered is another matter. "Yuck! I wasn't completely revolted, but it wasn't easy on my nose," exclaimed one FeederWatcher. It doesn't help that most directions call for rendering suet twice before molding. There is no magic number of renderings. Each rendering and filtering removes more impurities and makes a "power bar" for the birds that holds together better. A Pennsylvania FeederWatcher adds about 3 cups of seeds, nuts, and raisins to each cup of rendered suet. In nearby New York, Corrina Frigon uses more flexible proportions: "Get the amount of suet you want to work with, render it down, and then start putting things in." The things she puts in include oats, cornmeal, peanut butter, raisins, and cherries. She likes the color that cherry juice gives the mix. Most FeederWatchers find it more convenient to substitute another fat for suet when they want to make mixtures or puddings. Plenty of high-fat foods are appealing to birds, including lard, bacon drippings, peanut butter, and vegetable shortening

If FeederWatchers want suet cakes, they generally buy them. And buy them they do. The sales of commercial suet cakes increase every year, and Karen Alstott feels it will be a long time before they stop growing. Go to any wild bird supply store or look through any wild bird catalog and you are sure to find an array of different suet products, from 12-ounce cakes to 3-pound bricks and more. Some grocery stores carry them too.

Pine Tree Farms in Interlaken, New York, for example, produces its own brand of beef kidney suet cakes14 different kindsin addition to making suet products for other wild bird supply companies. Flavors range from a standard peanut butter suet cake to an orange-papaya suet dough to an exotic concoction that combines dried crickets and mealworms.

The orange-papaya suet dough is a "summer suet" or "no-melt suet." Summer suets contain enough flour or meal to bind them together and keep them from melting. Because rendered suet has few impurities, it does not go rancid on a hot day. Raw suet can go rancid, which means it can rot and stink and shouldn't be offered in hot weather.

Several FeederWatchers recommend using small suet cakes so they can be changed often. Deena Richmond of Los Osos, California, says her trick is to hang one small suet cage in each of her four birch trees with a different kind of suet in each feeder. That way, birds have a choice. She says she's tried almost all of Wild Birds Unlimited's suet cakes. Nut 'n Raisin is most popular with her birds. She feeds Bug Bites duringthe rainy season and a calcium-fortified cake in spring.

The virtues of raw suet versus commercially produced suet mixes versus homemade bird puddings are often debated. "I can hang out store-bought suet cakes, and they'll last a couple of weeks. I hang out my homemade cakes, and they're gone in a day or two," says a Wisconsin FeederWatcher.

An Alabama FeederWatcher has noticed some preferences among her feeder birds. "My mockers love pure suet and my homemade gorp, as do the Brown Thrashers. They will eat it year-round if it is there." She says she hasn't seen cardinals go after suet, "but they definitely eat the peanut butter mix I make, as do the Yellow-rumped and Pine warblers in winter."

One Minnesota FeederWatcher says, "When I offer both raw suet and puddings, downies and hairies go to the raw stuff every time. Nuthatches and chickadees don't seem so particular." On the other hand, a North Carolina FeederWatcher makes gorp and serves it in small pieces on her platform feeder. "This works better than suet. Downies and red-bellies are regulars. Daily visits from a Carolina Wren are a nice surprise."

Squirrels in most FeederWatchers' yards leave raw suet alone. "Neither the red nor gray squirrels found it appealingnot even the chipmunks," says Priscilla Trudell of New Hampshire. "Of course, the raccoons thought it was wondrous, and the bears came for miles for it."

Carol Takacs says the squirrels ignore her raw suet, "but if I put out gorp, they are all over it." It is the corn, peanuts, and other seeds in gorp and commercial suet cakes that attract most squirrels.

At his Bethesda, Maryland, home, FeederWatcher Ben Lin had no takers for either raw suet or commercial suet cakes. So before throwing everything out, he melted the uneaten suet and suet cakes together and added cornmeal, cracked corn, some mixed seed, and what turned out to be a key previously missing ingredientpeanut butter. "The recycled cakes were eaten within a week!"

Peanut butter is a high-fat, high-protein food that birds love. It is a favorite FeederWatch food, and one of the most popular ways to serve it is slathered plain on hanging pine cones. Some people are a little wary of offering it plain, however. Urban legend has it that birds can choke to death on the stuff. There is no evidence to support the fear, but those with doubts can mix it with a little cornmeal. One FeederWatcher says because of the stickiness and saltiness of peanut butter, she makes sure fresh water is always nearby. Carrie Smith takes a spatula and smears peanut butter right into the bark of a backyard tree. "Then I sprinkle it with mixed birdseed. That 'feeder' is a hard one to keep filled." A Virginia FeederWatcher says if you paint peanut butter on just one side of the tree, the Brown Creepers stay put for a while to eat. "They don't go around to the tree's back side every time I want to get a good look at them!" A Colorado FeederWatcher adds three pounds of assorted seeds and 1 1/2 pounds of cornmeal to a 2 1/2 pound jar of chunky peanut butter before spreading it about. In spring, he adds 12 ounces of finely crushed sterilized eggshells to the mix for extra calcium during egg laying.

A Red-breasted Nuthatch, used to picking seeds from pine cones, finds one filled with peanut butter gorp. photo by Hugh P. Smith, Jr.

Gaye Weisner feeds peanut oil. "I buy pure peanut butter for the house. When the oil rises to the top, I drain it off and save it in the fridge, where it turns solid. In the winter, I spread the lard-like oil on whole-grain bread and offer it in a suet-style basket."

Peanut butter is used in most recipes for gorp or puddings. Catherine Fagan of Carlisle, Ohio, makes a mixture of one part peanut butter, one part vegetable shortening, and three parts cornmeal or whole-grain flour. She smears it on a "peanut butter paddle." "This is a board with heavy wire mesh on both sides. After I smear it on, I press mixed seeds and raisins into it. Kinda messy, but the birds love it!"

A female Pileated Woodpecker picks suet from a suet log. Most suet logs are hung from a chain. This one is pole-mounted; it has an open can on the bottom as a cylindrical baffle to deter hungry raiders. photo by Boyd Conservation Field Center

Many FeederWatchers have their own pudding variation. Geoff Elliot of Lansing, West Virginia, makes a fruit pudding of rendered suet, peanut butter, cornmeal, and frozen fruit, such as grocery store blueberries and raspberries. He spreads the mixture directly onto tree trunks and branches. "I just smear it with a sandwich spreading knife. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and chickadees like it." For a mixture that can be cut into squares and used like suet cakes, try Victoria Wegner's peanut butter/lard mix. Melt and cream together 2 cups each lard and chunky peanut butter. Add 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and 4 cups each oatmeal and cornmeal. Press into a 9-by-13-inch pan. Cool and cut into squares. "Chickadees, titmice, and all the woodpeckers love this," says Victoria. Ron Piper has a similar lard and peanut butter mix that he uses to keep a gorp log replenished. He buys lard in 8-pound tubs at a discount. In the microwave, he melts 4 cups of lard and 1 cup of peanut butter. He then stirs in oatmeal and cornmeal until it starts to thicken. As a final step, he adds mixed birdseed. He stores the mix in the refrigerator, and "whenever I need some, I just nuke it 'til soft and load up the log feeder." Shelly Ducharme likes to set out gorp all year and uses a formula "that has no animal grease to rot." To one part each peanut butter, vegetable shortening, and whole-wheat flour, she adds three parts cornmeal and handfuls of seeds, raisins, and peanuts.

How do I get a copy?

Buy The FeederWatcher's Guide to Bird Feeding at
the Cornell Lab Birding Shop <http://birds.cornell.edu>
or call toll-free (877) 274­3716. Suggested retail price is $13.95.

Use this book as a fund-raiser for your bird club or educational group. Inquire with the publisher at (212) 207­7959.