Attracting Birds to Your Backyard Attracting Birds to Your Yard Bird feeding is a popular and convenient way to observe birds up close, and it augments the primary habitat formed by backyard and neighborhood plants. Bird feeding can provide regular observation of 15 to 20 or more species of birds that commonly come to backyard feeders. To attract birds, provide their three basic needs of food, water, and cover.
Food is the easiest requirement to fill.
Many birds can be attracted with a combination of white proso millet and black oil-type sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds have high energy content, and the thin shells allow easy use by smaller birds such as chickadees, pine siskins, juncos, sparrows, as well as cardinals, mourning doves, grosbeaks and others. White proso millet is also especially attractive to smaller birds and a small amount of finely cracked corn is a good addition to the mix. Safflower is being used more with reports that cardinals, chickadees, house and purple finches, nuthatches and morning doves consume it but that it is less attractive to grackles, starlings, house sparrows and squirrels. Suet is especially attractive to insect-eaters such as woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches and is a good winter energy source.