How to attract new bird species

Ideas for attracting a range of different birds to your garden feeders. There are loads of different things you can try
fatball feeder with berry fatball and standard fatballs

Fatballs

Within your fatball feeder, add two different types of fatball. Within my garden, I added some standard supermarket fatballs and for each alternate fatball I added berry fatballs. After adding alternate berry fatballs, I had a new visitors – long tailed tits. These did not visit before I tried this. Other fatballs ideas – try other types of fatball as alternates. Eg a higher quality fatball, consisting of different ingredients

Niger Seeds

Niger seeds are loved by goldfinches. Within my garden, I have goldfinches as summer visitors on my niger seeds every day. In the winter they have been less frequent visitors. Another seed which you could mix with the niger seeds is sunflower seed. There are different types of sunflower seed you can buy. Striped, black or hearts. Each can attract different bird types.

Peanut Feeder Ideas

The bluetits love my peanut feeder. But I decided to add some plain mixed nuts in with the peanuts. Amongst the mixed nuts were hazelnuts. A day or two after adding mixed nuts, a nuthatch visited my feeders for the first time. After reading up I found that Nuthatches are attracted by hazelnuts. Other birds attracted to mixed nuts include Great Spotted Woodpeckers

Seed Mixes

There are many different types of seed mix you can buy from specialist retailers. A few examples – winter mix, summer mix, robin mix, finch mix. Try some of these different seed mixes each time you run out. You never know what might stop by!