In particular, nuts other than peanuts are expected to be an excellent source of protein, giving wild birds the ability to forage throughout the winter while also replenishing their fat stores.
Besides peanuts, birds may eat a wide variety of other nuts, such as Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios, hazelnuts, walnuts, and almonds. Because salt is toxic to birds, nothing can have added tastes or coatings. The birds that consume nuts would appreciate you if you take the time to remove the shells.
Nuts of any kind, whether roasted, salted, or flavored, are safe for birds to eat.
If you insist on feeding the birds in your garden nuts that were originally intended for human consumption, you could be inviting disaster. Salt is particularly harmful to wild birds. High-salt nuts can be identified by their preparation method, specifically roasting and coating.
While Blue Jays and Chickadees can crack open peanuts because their shells are softer than average, most typical backyard birds can’t.
Wild birds can be fed nut shells, but most of the nuts themselves need to be removed from the shell before feeding. This includes walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, pistachios, and cashews.
For safety’s sake, crack open each nut and toss the shell separately to avoid any possibility of suffocation.
There is no need for a peanut bird feeder or any other kind of wire mesh feeder to provide a means of feeding nuts to wild birds; you may do it in complete transparency.
Any nuts offered to ground-feeding birds on the lawn can be safely controlled in open dish or platform bird feeders, provided the nuts are seen and immediately devoured.
Wild bird peanuts have a far longer shelf life than other types of nuts.
The wire mesh bird feeder for peanuts can be used to hold additional nuts if it is often used, preventing waste in the event that all of the nuts are consumed.
Contents
Birds can eat all natural nuts
Wild birds may consume any nut, so long as it is in its natural form, which is easily found in the health food section of most supermarkets.
If you want to give other nuts to wild birds, it’s best to get the kind sold in pet stores in the “bird feed” section, as that’s where you can rest assured they haven’t been adulterated with hazardous compounds during processing or addition.
So, if you want to feed wild birds, you won’t see the words “sold as for wild birds” on the package of anything other than peanuts.
Macadamia nuts, pecans, almonds, brazil nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, and cashews are all suitable options for feeding wild birds.
The cashew is my favorite nut, as it is for many people. However, you need not worry about being tempted to snack on them all by yourself, as unsalted cashew nuts are pretty bland.
Wild birds will accept unsalted, raw cashews, but you should never feed them to humans.
Nuts should be a top priority in the fall and especially throughout the winter because all wild birds need to replenish their energy and fat stores.
No salt or flavors
Providing the wild birds around you with a handful of whatever nuts you happen to have at the moment poses a serious threat to their well-being if you are under the impression otherwise.
To prepare nuts for human consumption, they are often blanched in salted water before being roasted in the oven.
What you need to know about salt is that it can make birds sick if given to them in little amounts, and can kill them if given to them in high amounts because it is poisonous and damages the liver.
Roasted nuts, including peanuts, cashews, and pistachios, almost always have added salt.
Never put out roasted nuts for the birds in your backyard, as they will undoubtedly contain a lot of salt. Only in the context of a wild bird peanut pack is it acceptable to feed roasted nuts to wild birds.
You shouldn’t give birds human nuts since they are coated in flavors like chocolate, which is toxic to birds. This is especially true of peanuts, which are the most often eaten human nut.
Unlike humans, birds don’t have taste senses, so you may safely feed them highly seasoned foods like chili, BBQ, or plain roasted nuts without worrying about them becoming sick.
You shouldn’t feed wild birds any flavored food or roasted nuts because of the salt content.
Unshelled nuts a must
It’s all well and good to provide wild birds access to a variety of nuts, but they won’t be able to eat them if they remain in their shells.
Some birds, like sparrows, northern cardinals, numerous finches, and grosbeaks, have a beak specifically designed to crack open nut and seed shells.
However, since you probably won’t be feeding most of these birds any form of nut, you need make sure that the nuts are easily available to many other species.
However, I have witnessed Chickadees and Blue Jays cracking apart soft peanut shells that have been placed on a surface or in a shelled peanut bird feeder that has been hung from the ceiling.
For the most part, however, unshelled nuts are preferred by birds like wrens, Clark’s nutcrackers, gray catbirds, warblers, and many species of woodpeckers.
You’ll need to get the nutcrackers out and use them to crack open all of the nuts, then dispose of the shells safely to avoid any potential choking hazards.
It’s especially helpful for birds that eat walnuts and Brazil nuts if you break them up into smaller pieces, but there’s no harm in doing so with any nut.
Nuts in moderation only
Serving birds anything other than specialized wild bird peanuts requires caution.
Seeds are supplied to birds year-round, but birds have other dietary preferences that change with the seasons, such as eating more nuts and insects in the winter and more fruits in the summer.
Feeding birds anything but peanuts outside will result in the nuts rotting a lot faster than you’re used to seeing.
Make sure you have enough of nut-eating and, by extension, seed-eating birds in your yard before you waste any of those expensive healthy nut kinds.
For optimal results, feed only a small number of nuts at a time until the birds start eating, and then switch to offering solely walnuts, cashews, or hazelnuts to keep the nut supply continuing.
Backyard birds can be fed nuts from spring through summer, but beware that any nuts brought back to the nest could pose a choking hazard to the chicks.
Nut eating backyard birds
The birds in your backyard that consume a wide variety of seeds are the ones most likely to devour your supply of tree nuts.
Many species of birds, such as blue jays, wrens, downy woodpeckers, golden-fronted woodpeckers, gray catbirds, hairy woodpeckers, orange-crowned warblers, piliated woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, red-headed woodpeckers, spotted titmice, and tufted titmice, will eat nuts you put out for them in your yard.
Most commonly, blue jays, woodpeckers, and the tufted titmouse will be the birds observed munching on peanuts.
Of them, the Blue Jay is the only one that doesn’t want to eat on an open top platform feeder or the ground, but the rest have no trouble using a wire mesh peanut bird feeder full of wild bird peanuts.
There is no shortage of ordinary backyard birds eager to eat a wide variety of nuts, and if you have any skeptics, you can easily silence them by providing a seed mix that includes a wide variety of nuts.
The best course of action is to put out a dish of nuts rather than rely on a bird feeder, as not all backyard birds eat from it.
Since many birds only eat the ground, they can only be seen foraging on the lawn, where nuts can be dropped over the fence. To stop nuts from fast spoiling on the ground, an open-top platform bird feeder can be employed to maintain order.
Nuts of importance
Because there are so many nutrient-dense foods that can be fed to backyard birds, we can afford to offer them a variety of mixtures that are not as common but nonetheless costly.
However, wild bird peanuts are still the most secure choice, as birds have been eating them for longer and have developed a stronger association with them as food than with any other sort of nut.
The method by which peanuts are fed to birds can be used to the feeding of other kinds of nuts; however, larger nuts will need to be smashed to make them easier to bite and absorb.
Peanuts are a great source of nutrition for migratory birds because they are always sold in their natural state and neither salted or roasted.
You can use any old nut you like, as long as it follows in the footsteps of peanuts and doesn’t have any hazardous coatings or salt content.
In addition to seed mixtures, suet, and dried mealworms, peanuts remain one of the four finest items you can provide wild birds.
It’s a lot of fun to experiment with different nut varieties to feed the birds in your yard, and no other sort of wild bird food has so many possibilities as a peanut, with walnuts, cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios, and Brazil nuts all being identifiable to us.
Sure, there are plenty of bird seed options, but certain nut species are actually human-friendly.
To summarize
It’s safe to assume that if birds can safely eat unsalted, unflavored, uncoated peanuts out of their shells, they can eat any form of natural nut.
Birds can be fed a wide variety of nut species, from Brazil nuts and hazelnuts to walnuts and cashews and pistachios.
The key distinction is that you can never roast or salt them and they must always be served raw.
While I and undoubtedly many others count cashews, pistachios, and walnuts among our favorite nuts, their lack of salt and roasted flavor means you won’t be inclined to snack on them.
Nuts are OK for birds to eat as long as they are as bland as possible and can be found in the healthy food or pet isle of supermarkets or purchased from specialized pet stores.
It is important to provide nuts without their shells so that all birds have access to them. You shouldn’t throw away a golden opportunity just because the birds are curious about it but can’t crack the shell.
Winter is the most important time to feed birds peanuts and other nuts so that they may restock on fat and energy after a long, cold season.
If you want to ensure that the birds in your yard can keep eating the same food they have been eating, it’s best to include peanuts in your nut mixes.
Backyard birds will happily consume the variety of peanuts you provide them because they are used to eating a wide variety of nuts in the outdoors.
Wild bird peanuts should be fed in the typical wire mesh peanut bird feeder, whereas other nuts should be offered in the open because they will perish faster than specialist peanuts.
