Fruit Feeding Adds to Backyard Fun

Summer is one of the best times to attract fruit-eating birds. Different birds prefer different fruit. Just place suet nuggets, raisins, grapes, apple slices, orange halves, blueberries, cranberries and even currants to attract robins, Cedar Waxwings, orioles, catbirds and tanagers. A tray feeder works best, but remember to keep your fruit fresh and your feeders clean. 

Attracting fruit-eating birds can take time and patience. If you have mature fruit trees or brushes, you will more readily attract these interesting birds. 

Apples are the easiest and best fruit to use because a wide variety of birds like them. House Finches, orioles, robins, blue jays, thrashers, several kinds of woodpeckers, chickadees, and hummingbirds feed on apples. 

To use apples, use a dish or tray type feeder, but cut the apple in half. When you put out an apple, make sure to open it up by cutting some of the peel off with a knife or potato peeler. Score the open surface of the apple a little, so if the surface dries it won’t form a second skin. Softer, less tart apples work best like Golden or Red Delicious.

Oranges also work extremely well to feed orioles, but they love apples, too. You can cut an orange in half and place open-side up. A nesting oriole can go through as many as three whole oranges a day, cleaning them down to the peel! Grape jelly is also a popular food you can use to feed to orioles with an oriole feeder or dish feeder.

Spring is the best time to introduce birds to apple feeding because many nesting birds use apples as food for their nestlings up until the time they fledge. Even after fledging, many times youngsters are at the feeder with Mom and Dad begging. Happy Bird Feeding!

(Kathy and her husband, John, own and operate the Wild Birds Unlimited, located at 111 S. 24th Street.  Billings and at www.wbu.com/billings.  She is a Certified Bird Feeding Specialist and is past president of the Yellowstone Valley Audubon Society).