How to Attract Chickadees

Lots of people will tell you that chickadees are their favorite feeder birds. They are easily attracted, and can often be hand-tamed. Cheerful as a Christmas card, chickadees are versatile acrobats who can either perch or hang upside-down to glean seeds from your feeder.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Shelled peanuts
• Suet
• Nesting box
• Birdseed
• Peanut butter
• Black-oil sunflower seed
• Bird feeder
• Suet feeder

1. Plant trees and bushes that attract chickadees. Depending on the species in your area, these can include pine, hemlock and birch trees, and berry-bearing plants.

2. Buy a bird feeder. Because chickadees are so physically versatile, you can use tube, domed, satellite, hopper or platform feeders with equal success.

3. Fill the feeders with black-oil sunflower seeds or shelled peanuts.

4. Put up a suet feeder, or hang pieces of suet in a mesh bag from a tree branch.

5. Make a mix of peanut butter and birdseed and spread it on a tree limb or make "cakes" to hang in a mesh bag.

6. Put up a chickadee nesting box in the spring. Make sure it has the exact dimensions specified for a chickadee.

Tips & Warnings

• Hand-taming chickadees is relatively easy if you have a little patience. Simply put some peanut kernels or sunflower seeds in your hand, extend it toward the birds, and wait for them to come and take the food.

• Suet is especially important to offer in winter, as it is a high-energy food that will help the birds keep up their body temperature.

• A chickadee's bill is not strong enough to crack a sunflower seed, so the birds will often take just one seed and go to a tree branch to hammer it open.