During the current months, our garden visitors are in abundance but what do we feed them? This blog is part one of our ultimate bird food guide in which we will uncover what to feed birds, when and how. If you’re new to bird feeding or want to simply learn more about it, the ultimate bird food guide is for you!

Part One Of The Ultimate Bird Food Guide

In part one of the ultimate bird food guide, we will explore specific bird seeds and what is best to put out in your garden if you are wanting to attract specific bird species. To attract a variety of birds, it is recommended to present different seeds.

Being one of the leading bird food suppliers in the UK, at Kennedy Wild Bird Food, we pride ourselves on offering quality bird food with a comprehensive range of products.

Bird Food

Birds often struggle to find natural sources of nutrition, feeding birds from your garden offers a lot of advantages, not only preserves UK wildlife but means you're doing your bit for wildlife conserv ation.

To know what bird food you need, it’s helpful to know what species of birds are visiting your garden. Different birds have different favourites!

Further Reading: Which Bird Seed Is Best?

image of bird leaning against a bird food tin

The Ultimate Bird Food Guide: What To Feed Birds

Sunflower Seeds

Sunflowers seeds are a firm favourite amongst a wide variety of garden and wild birds. Sunflower hearts and sunflower seeds host an array of benefits year-round including:

No mess, sunflower hearts’ lack of shell means they can be eaten whole by most birds.
Loved by many
Can be fed in many different ways
Can be fed to fledglings

Sunflower seeds and sunflower hearts offer high energy and healthy oils, giving birds the nutrition they need all year round. Sunflower seeds are often known as a bird’s ‘super food’

Shop our range of sunflower seeds and sunflower hearts here.

Peanuts

Peanuts, when fed correctly, can be a brilliant source of nutrition for birds. Although whole peanuts are recommended to avoid due to them causing a choking hazard to young birds, split peanuts, or other peanuts of the right quality and type can be a brilliant treat for your flying garden visitors.

Peanuts, specific for bird consumption, are packed with protein and offer a tasty treat. Although, as with humans, birds may suffer when they consume too much salt, something that is found in many peanut types.

Nyjer Seeds

Nyjer seeds are small black seeds with a fine texture, perfect for adding to a mixture with other types of bird seed. Nyjer seeds not only provide birds with high oil content and good energy source but they work wonders for your garden, attracting lots of bees too!

Suet And Fat Balls

Suet and fat balls are especially high energy and are a great food source for the winter months. Giving birds an appropriate energy source to keep them warm and safe. A bird’s fuel source is the crucial area of fat under its feathers which becomes particularly vital as the weather gets colder.

Suet and fat balls can often melt and go rotten in the summer months so we advise prioritising these tasty treats in the winter or to keep them out of direct sunlight when the weather is warmer.

Live Food

Replicating food that birds are likely to find in the wild is a brilliant way of attracting them to your garden. Live mealworms are the best-selling live food at Kennedy Wild Bird Food due to so many bird species feeding on them.

The majority of birds love insects and adding a live food source to your bird food mixture is sure to attract many flying faces. Not only this, but live food provides them with an ideal energy source and good fat content.

The easiest way in attracting a large number of bird species to your garden is to offer a mixture of bird seeds .

At Kennedy, we pride ourselves on offering high-quality bird food and the finest mixtures for you to successfully attract birds to your garden.

Part two of our ultimate bird food guide will explore exactly how to feed birds, and when the best times to do so are.