Peanut Butter — It’s Not Just For People

©Marlene Condon

January 3, 2020

Happy New Year! You can give birds a happy start to 2020 if you provide peanut butter (PB) as part of your daily offerings.

Many people put out peanuts, but I find that PB takes up less space in the cupboard, and it does not spoil as quickly. This fatty food is attractive to many kinds of birds: Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens, Northern Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, Brown Creepers, White-breasted Nuthatches, Blue Jays, chickadees, and sparrows. And there is nothing better for bringing in woodpeckers.

For birds that can cling to a vertical surface, you can simply smear the peanut butter on tree trunks or pine cones. But for birds that can’t cling very easily (for example, cardinals, sparrows, and juncos), you should place the PB on a flat surface, such as a tray or the top of a stump.

Pure peanut butter can be served, but a fattier version will provide more calories which birds especially need in winter. I melt one part shortening (but you can use lard instead) and then stir in an equal volume of PB (chunky or smooth) until it is well mixed.

To stiffen up the mixture to make it easier to handle, I add about three parts (also by volume) cornmeal. Flour could be used, but the resulting mixture can be difficult to spread. You can adjust the amount, however, to alter the consistency. Cornmeal might be more flavorful, although I can’t say that I’ve noticed any preference indicated by the birds.

Other animals, such as squirrels and raccoons, enjoy peanut butter too. To keep mammals from eating all of the PB, I place it in a modified suet basket which can be hung on a baffled pole out of their reach. A shelf is attached to the basket so that non-clinging birds still have access to the PB.

A suet basket is simply a wire cage into which you can place raw fat pieces (suet) obtained from the meat department of a grocery store, or commercially prepared rendered fat (melted fat hardened into block form). You can usually purchase suet baskets in local hardware and department stores and pet or bird-supply outlets.

I have also drilled holes into snags (standing dead trees) and filled them with peanut butter. These PB trees are magnets for Red-bellied, Downy, Hairy, and even Pileated Woodpeckers—and Gray Squirrels that rapidly deplete this PB supply! To remedy this situation, I placed one-quarter-inch hardware cloth over the holes (hardware cloth is sold at most hardware stores). The birds can still eat the PB through the screen, but the squirrels can’t (see photo).

If you do not have any natural snags into which to drill holes, you might do as I did. A neighbor gave me some locust logs — two that were 6 feet long and one that was 12 feet long — which I “planted” in a vertical position in my front yard where I could easily observe them. They became very popular dining spots for a variety of birds.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can reach her at marlenecondon@aol.com