Making Bird Food at Home Without Seeds

As a bird lover, you likely enjoy putting out bird feeders filled with seeds to attract feathered friends to your yard. While birds certainly love munching on sunflower seeds, millet, and other grains, there are many seed-free bird food options you can make right at home. Read on to discover over a dozen homemade treats to offer your backyard birds.

Why Make Homemade Bird Food Without Seeds?

Seeds make up an important part of many birds’ diets. However, birds need more than just seeds to thrive. They require a balanced diet filled with protein, healthy fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.

While you don’t want to eliminate seed from your feeders entirely, mixing in some homemade seed-free bird food can help diversify your feathered friends’ diets. Here are some key reasons to offer additional food options:

• Attract more species Certain birds prefer seed-free fare. Hummingbirds relish homemade nectar while woodpeckers go nuts for suet cakes. Widening the menu brings in more varieties of birds.

• Provide key nutrients: Seeds lack some vitamins and minerals birds need. Seed-free recipes allow you to mix in nutrient-dense ingredients like fruit, nuts, and peanut butter.

• Offer food year-round Some homemade foods, like suet, allow you to feed birds even in hot weather when traditional seeds would spoil

• Appeal to baby birds: When fledglings leave the nest, parents often prefer to feed them protein-rich foods like mealworms, suet, and chopped fruit.

• deter squirrels: These fluffy-tailed rodents fill up on seed mixes. Offering food they don’t eat as much may help save seed for the birds.

Easy Homemade Bird Foods Without Seeds

Ready to whip up some seed-free bird food? Here are over a dozen recipes to try

Suet Cakes, Nuggets, and Logs

Suet is beef fat, which provides birds with energy-dense nutrition. You can buy suet cakes, but making your own lets you control the quality ingredients. Simple suet recipes combine suet, peanut butter, cornmeal, oats, nuts, and dried fruit. Pour mixes into molds or pinecones to harden. Hang in mesh suet cages.

Peanut Butter Bird Treats

Just like us, birds go nuts for peanut butter! Blend it with cornmeal, oats, or nuts, and stuff into pinecones or smear onto tree bark. Another easy option is rolling peanut butter inside birdseed. Great for woodpeckers, chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches.

Fruit and Veggie Skewers

Chop fruit like apples, pears, berries, oranges, and bananas into small pieces. Alternate on a skewer with cubed cheese and vegetables like sweet peppers, tomatoes, and leafy greens. Hang skewwers from a branch or feeder.

Hummingbird Nectar

While not exactly “food,” hummingbirds need nectar for energy. Make your own by combining four parts water to one part white sugar. No food coloring needed! Put nectar into a hummingbird feeder and watch these feathered dynamos buzz in.

Birdie Bread

This homemade treat looks like banana bread but birds love it! Simply mash overripe bananas and mix with peanut butter, cornmeal, oats, flour, dried fruit, and nuts. Bake into loaves or muffins and crumble over feeders.

Cereal Cakes

Use a muffin tin to make bird-friendly “cakes” from dry cereal like Cheerios combined with peanut butter, fruit, suet, honey, or nut butter. Great way to use up stale cereal! Once cooled, pop cakes out and place on feeders.

Cookie Dough Balls

No need to bake these cookie dough balls. Just mix peanut butter, cornmeal, oats, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Roll dough into balls and place on feeders or push onto pinecones. Chickadees especially love these tasty morsels.

Berry Yogurt Cups

Start with small cardboard yogurt cups. Spoon in a mixture of Greek yogurt, chopped berries, nuts, granola and a touch of honey. Add a craft stick and freeze overnight. Next day, pop out of cups and hang from branches.

Oatmeal Balls

If you make breakfast oatmeal, keep the leftover cooked oats. Mix with peanut butter, raisins, berries, and nuts. Form into balls and refrigerate until firm. Place on platform feeders for an instant oatmeal treat for birds.

Pasta Salad

Boil fun shaped pasta like rotini, penne or farfalle. Toss with diced fruit, shredded cheese, chopped greens, and Italian dressing. Allow to cool fully before spooning onto feeders. Easily customizable based on what you have on hand.

Baked Potato Topping

When you bake potatoes, reserve those yummy broiled toppings! Dice up bacon, cheddar, steamed broccoli, and sautéed onions. Mix together and serve on a platform feeder. Cheap, easy, and zero waste!

Mealworms and Live Food

While insects are technically animal products, backyard birds relish live creatures like mealworms, crickets, grasshoppers and larvae. Buy dried mealworms and other creepy crawlers from a pet store. Serve them up in shallow dishes or look for ready-to-hang mesh insect feeders.

Homemade Lard Balls

Render your own pork lard by cooking and straining fatty pork trimmings. Mix the rendered lard 50/50 with peanut butter. Optionally add nuts, seeds, or cornmeal for texture. Form into balls or pour into small cups. Refrigerate until firm and place out onto feeders.

Gelatin Bird Jigglers

These jiggly treats are simple to make, combining gelatin, fruit juice, berries, and seeds. Pour the mixture into molds and refrigerate to set. Remove jigglers and hang them from branches on a warm day. As they melt, birds can slurp up the fruity liquid and nibble the solid bits.

Tips for Offering Seed-Free Bird Foods

Here are some pointers to follow when making and serving homemade bird food without seeds:

• Offer new foods alongside familiar seeds at first. Once birds grow accustomed to the new offerings, you can use less seed mix over time.

• Try different recipes to see which homemade foods your birds like best. Monitor to see which treats get eaten fastest.

• Avoid anything moldy, mushy or spoiled. Stick to fresh ingredients. Discard uneaten foods daily.

• For hot days, focus on no-melt options like suet cakes and baked goods versus soft fruits.

• Clean feeders regularly and use separate feeders for wet, sticky foods like jelly and nectar to avoid contamination.

• Place feeders in safe, quiet areas away from predators. Near trees or shrubs where birds can quickly take shelter.

• Homemade goodies can’t entirely replace bird seed. Always keep some seed feeders available for birds that prefer seeds.

Enjoy Watching Your Birds Feast!

Want your winged visitors to thrive? Whip up a variety of homemade bird food for your backyard buffet! Offering yummy seed-free treats alongside traditional mixes creates a balanced diet. Soon, you’ll see a diversity of happy, healthy birds gathering at your all-you-can-eat homemade cafe.