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.

[lydjoseph]

on 4/13/2009 I live in the mountains of Utah. I have been hand feeding chickadees and nuthatches for a few years now. They are adorable. I walk outside with a palm full of food and then I call them. If they are hungry they will come right away and politely take turns landing on my palm and taking peanuts from my hand. Some are brave, some are shy but they are all so cute. And when it is cold outside they are especially willing to come to me.