More on Winter Suet Feeding

Suet is readily eaten by titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers. In addition to the regular suet-feeder visitors, wrens, creepers, and warbles occasionally pick at suet mixes.

You can hang suet chunks from a tree in an onion bag or half-inch hardware-cloth basket, or in a more durable cage feeder like the one shown here.

You can also make your own suet pudding and feeder. Suet puddings are made by grinding and melting suet and adding seeds. (There is no evidence that suet puddings are more attractive to birds than chunks of suet.)

Pack peanut butter-corn meal blends (when you mix the peanut butter with cornmeal it ot only stretches the expensive peanut butter but also makes this sticky treat easier to swallow) and suet puddings into the crevices of large pinecones or into one-inch diameter holes drilled into logs.

Hang the pinecones and the logs from poles near other feeders, from trees, or from a wire stretched between trees. Avoid feeding suet when temperatures climb into the 80 degree range unless the type of suet that you buy indicates that it will not melt; it turns rancid and drippy and may damage feathers. There are a number of very good no-melt suet cakes on the market.