I would argue that suet is the most important food that you can put in your bird feeding station.
During the winter months, the calorie-dense blocks of beef fat sustain insectivorous birds that struggle to find their preferred food source. Birds that benefit most are woodpeckers, nuthatches, and the subject of a recent installment of this column, Carolina wrens. Suet is especially important to the wrens, birds more fit for the south, and it is one of the few things preventing a total loss of their local population, which has plummeted dramatically over two brutally cold winters.
I would also argue that suet can be one of the more dangerous foods that you can put in your bird feeding station.
How so?
First, let’s start off with a lesson about eggs.
Human babies in the womb get their oxygen through the umbilical cord. Birds, being birds and not mammals, lack that connection to their mother. But, they still need oxygen, one of the drivers of animal life, and they need to expel carbon dioxide, one of the wastes of animal life. So, they do that through the eggshell. Every egg may look totally closed off to the outside world, but they are not. They are semi-permeable. Each one is covered with 7,000 to 17,000 microscopic pores through which pass those gases and moisture.
When suet gets warm, such as when the outside air temperature is 60 to 70 degrees, it can get soft. That causes the fat as grease to come off the block easily, adhering to the dining bird’s feathers as it holds onto or dangles from the suet basket. The bird can then take that grease back to the nest and when sitting on eggs (a duty shared by both female and male woodpeckers) the fat can come off and coat the outside of the eggs. It blocks the pores and, in a way, suffocates the young bird in the egg.
As you may know, male woodpeckers are now getting ready to breed with their ladies, as made evident by the incessant hammering on hollow limbs, stove pipes, mailboxes, and road signs that they do to mark their territory. In warmer-than-average winters, some already would have bred.
So, my suggestion to you is that you mark your calendar for March 15th of every year as the day to take down your suet feeder. Sure, 60-plus days are hard to find in March and early-April in Western New York, but all you need is one or two such days to soften suet and create a crisis inside a woodpecker nest.
I would suggest not putting it up again until sometime in the fall. Most of our local woodpeckers and nuthatches have just one brood per year, but egg laying time could occur anytime between late March and June. One species, the red-bellied woodpecker, does have two broods, which can last well into summer.
The longer you wait, the better it is. Besides saving the baby birds, you can save the adults, too. Unless you use the so-called no-melt suet, suet isn’t the best food to leave out on warm spring and summer days. It can turn rancid quickly, sickening and killing the birds that eat it.
So, if you want healthy birds, at all stages of life, take away the suet in the spring and summer. But, please, don’t let my message completely discourage you from using it. Just as easily as suet can take life away, it can keep it going. Continue to use it during the winter when it is a genuine lifesaver.