It's winter and birds need our help

More and more migratory birds stay "at home" because of the supposedly mild winter. But if it gets colder they are dependent on our help.

We can help them to find food! Soft food eaters such as Starling, Blackbird, Wren, Robin or Hedge Brown are preferred to find their food on the ground.
Coarse grain food does not help them. They eat animal food or only very fine seeds. Offer them oatmeal, poppy seeds, bran, raisins, nuts and fruit. Special compound feeds or feed blocks are available in pet shops. A special delicacy are oat flakes soaked briefly in hot oil, preferably sunflower or rapeseed oil.

It's best to set up several small feeding areas. These should always be easily accessible for birds, but at the same time difficult for cats to reach. To avoid diseases, the feeding areas should not be wet and regularly cleaned. Roofed areas are best. To prevent pathogens from being transmitted, the feeding areas and houses should be kept clean, swept dry every day and scrubbed once a week with boiling hot water. There are special food dispensers on the market that allow hygienic feeding.

Food in your own garden

The best help for birds, however, is the close-to-nature garden: birds can find stems, flower remains and fruit stalks with seeds here even in winter, as well as numerous insects that spend the winter in dead plant parts or stacks of brushwood.