Peanut Pieces & Bits

Peanut Pieces & Bits
Peanuts attract some of the most entertaining birds of all the species seen at backyard bird feeders. The acrobatic antics and maneuvers of woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches and wrens alone make it worthwhile to offer peanuts in your habitat, but many other species love peanuts, too. Birds that love peanuts include cardinals, pyrrhuloxia, siskins, finches, sparrows, doves, juncos and especially jays – who love them so much they sometimes bury them for later consumption, if they can remember where they buried their "treasure!"

Feeding peanuts to wild birds is still relatively new to North America compared to Europe, where they have fed peanuts to birds for many years. However, it didn't take very long for peanut growers and producers here to recognize that the wild bird food industry was the perfect place to market the bits and pieces of peanuts that were broken in the process of being made into snack foods for humans. Today, those peanut "rejects" are commonly sold as bird food and are also found in many specialty mixes – known as "Woodpecker" or "Chickadee" – as well as the better quality wild bird seed mixes.

Many people who add peanuts to the bird food menu in their backyards discover that many species prefer them to black oil sunflower seeds. Birds enjoy them so much that special "peanut feeders" now exist so that the birds that love them the most – woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees and nuthatches – have a better chance at keeping them to themselves. These feeders are usually made of wire mesh that require a bird to cling to it in order to get at the peanuts inside, thereby making it more difficult for species like doves and sparrows to eat them.

You can also offer smaller bits, or the hearts of the peanuts, to the smaller birds and doves that enjoy them but can't cling to feeders by offering them in tubular, hopper or tray feeders if you like. However you offer them, some small bits of peanuts will find their way to the ground below the feeder where they'll be readily gobbled up by all your ground-feeding species.

Peanuts aren't really nuts at all – they're legumes, and are the underground tubers of the peanut plant, Arachis hypogaea – but that doesn't matter one bit to the birds that love them. Peanuts are high in protein, oil and fat, which makes them a perfect addition to the foods you offer the birds in your backyard, especially during the winter when shorter days require birds to eat as much high-energy food as possible in less time.

It should be noted that squirrels probably love peanuts even more than birds, so it's very important to offer them in a feeder that is fitted with a baffle that will keep the squirrels from gaining access to the feeder. Peanuts that get wet will get moldy if they aren't consumed fast enough, and although there's little chance of that happening since they're such a preferred treat for the birds, it's important that feeders filled with peanuts be checked often to insure they're still good. A hanging baffle over your peanut feeder that will protect them from inclement weather is a good idea, even if the feeder is already hanging on a pole fitted with a squirrel baffle.

Freshness counts with peanuts because they can become rancid if the stock isn't moved quickly enough. And yes, peanuts are more expensive than some of the other foods you can offer to your backyard birds, but none will give you as much viewing enjoyment.