Bird Suet Fat Balls offer up the perfect snack when hungry birds go in search of food for themselves and their nesting chicks. High in energy and extremely nutritious, our bird suet fat balls are an easy way you can support your local wildlife population in your garden. Here at Gardeners Dream, we stock our own brand of bird suet balls along with Squawk branded products. Our suet balls are high in fat and oils, ensuring your garden birds benefit from a good dose of energy with every peck. Looking to buy bird food online? We stock our bird suet fat balls in a diverse range of pack sizes. Delivered promptly, our good quality bird suet tubs range up to 10L. Our individual suet balls range from quantities of 10-300 offering excellent value when buying bird feed in bulk.
It's possible to place fat balls in a variety of settings within your garden. However, fat balls are commonly placed on bird feeders, or within specialist suet holders.
We recommend only placing a small amount of suet balls out at a time, so that it gives the birds chance to eat these up while still tasty and fresh.
If you have squirrels or pigeons who frequent your garden, you can also find specialist bird feeders to protect your bird feed from other creatures if you so wish.
Other than that, the only thing to keep in mind is to replenish any eaten suet balls or bird feed regularly. This will ensure hungry birds can always find food when they come looking for it.
Blackbirds
Blue Tits
Chaffinches
Coal Tits
Collared Doves
Dunnocks
Great Tits
Greenfinches
House Sparrows
Long Tail Tits
Nuthatch
Robins
Starlings
Thrush
Woodpeckers
Wood Pigeons
Wrens
Bird fat balls (also known as suet balls) are made from suet.
In general, some of the ingredients birds love include sunflower seeds, oatmeal, sultanas, raisins, mealworms, waxworms, loose peanuts and seed mixtures.
Fat suet balls vary in terms of ingredients, but contain most of the high fat and oil ingredients that are a crucial source of energy and nutrition.
After all, flying around all day, fighting off predators and taking care of their young soon takes its toll on our birds!
Bird suet fat balls for birds is one of the best ways to support birds, and the local wildlife population as a whole.
Here are just some of the benefits that bird suet fat balls provide specifically.
As we’ve just established, birds need a constant source of food as they continue to burn energy throughout the day. But not all bird food is created equal, especially if we try to give birds human food.
For instance, many believe that leaving bread out for the birds is a good idea. But often, bread doesn’t offer up the right kind of nutrition that birds actually need.
So while bread is fine in small quantities, adding in some traditional bird food such as suet balls will offer more benefit to birds overall.
Also, the suet mixture is designed to last. In contrast, bread and other human food quickly goes bad when it is left outside or is out of date. This also means that birds might not be getting the right nutrition, and depending on the food substance it could make them ill.
Keeping to giving your birds the right feed will ensure they remain healthy and happy, and bird suet fat balls are just the ticket.
Once garden birds identify a good feeding spot, that location will become the talk (or in this case tweet) of the town.
Birds are extremely observant, and will notice where other birds are finding food from. This will also encourage them to pay your garden a visit. So if you want to attract nesting birds and their families routinely back to your garden, suet balls are a great way to go.
As birds fly all year round, they can bring some much needed life and character to our outdoor spaces especially during the winter months.
If you’re lucky, you might even notice some unusual birds visiting for food as the seasons change. For example, Goldfinches leave the UK during the winter and return in the spring. They bring a big appetite with them!
If you're keen not to have your bird food go all over your patio or lawn, then suet balls can help keep your garden tidy. For smaller gardens especially, you may find suet balls offer up a lot of convenience.
Suet holds together well, and can sometimes contain other binding agents such as wheat flour.
Plus, you can place a suet ball anywhere that suits such as on a bird feeder.
It’s also possible to purchase suet feeding stations which can be hung from anywhere in your garden. All you have to do is place the suet ball inside and replace it once it’s been eaten.
We tend to think of putting bird food out in the spring when birds start to nest. However, just like us humans, birds need feeding all year round!
In the winter especially, birds really need the extra fat that suet balls contain. When birds eat fat balls this helps them put weight on and conserve energy, especially during the colder winter months.
As suet balls are also highly visible, birds can fly in and spot the food easily. Remember, in poor weather conditions (such as snow) other types of bird food or seed may not be as easy to find.
New to all things wild bird fat balls? Or even bird feeding in general?
We've answered some of the most common queries below. For anything else, please contact us.
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Various bird species eat fat balls due to the high energy and nutritional content they contain. Alongside fats and oils, fat balls can contain seeds, nuts and other essential sources of calories for birds.
There are a large variety of birds which eat suet. In the UK wild bird species partial to suet fat include Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Long Tailed Tits, Robins, Sparrows and many more.
An interesting fact about why suet is great for birds, is that it supports the more energy-intensive tasks birds carry out. Alongside flying, feeding and nesting, birds feathers also regenerate often. Every year birds grow a new set of feathers and this process is called moulting.
So just like how humans need protein to grow hair and nails, birds need similar nutrients to grow new feathers.
If kept in their original packing, a fat ball made from suet boasts a long lifespan of up to two years. When the packaging has been opened, the lifespan can reduce to a few weeks.
Once a suet ball has been placed outside however, that's another story as the birds will soon be down to peck away at it!
While some exotic birds have a keen sense of smell, most wild birds we find in our gardens will actually use their vision to spot potential food sources.
Birds can also learn routines to help them find food. For example, if you’ve ever gone to feed a bird and you see it’s already in the garden waiting for you, the chances are the bird has remembered your garden is a good spot to find a bite to eat.
If you do get regular bird visits to your garden, maintaining the food source is actually really important. That’s because birds can waste precious energy flying to where they think they can find food, only to have to return to their nest empty handed.
Birds are very observant creatures, and will notice where other birds are locating food. They will often come to inspect the site themselves, and if they find food they are likely to return, as they have can never have enough extra nutrition.
Birds can feed at any time of the day, though most commonly they can be seen eating in the morning. As suet fat balls for birds contain pure fat and other nutrients, they can offer birds a high energy breakfast to help sustain them throughout the day.
If your birds have a good supply of winter berries in your garden, they might not require too much food during this time. However, if you don't have a fresh supply of berries on your shrubs, or at any other time of the year, you should always help ensure your local birds are well fed.
Alongside bird suet fat balls, we stock a range of other bird food types here at Gardeners Dream.
Our snacks for your feathered friends include dried mealworms, sunflower seeds, split peanuts, kibbled peanuts, suet filled coconut halves and much more.
Be sure to shop our entire range of bird food, plus check out our plants, flowers and hedging to treat your garden as a whole, right here on our online store.
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