Expert Reveals the Little-Known Advantage of Scattering Sweet Corn Around Your Bird Feeder

If you spend time with your bird feeder camera, you’ll witness not just endless entertainment unfolding outside your window, but also a whole lot of food science. A parrot picks up a pea in its beak and gulps it down. A black-capped chickadee holds onto a nut with its feet and nibbles it in small bites. A glittering hummingbird sticks out its skinny tongue to lap up nectar from a flower. A feeder doesn’t have to offer to the birds what a wedding buffet offers to the guests, but it can surely be made appealing and healthy with enough protein, carbs, and other nutrients for the feathery guests. 

Sweetcorn, for instance, is criticized by many birdkeepers for its high-carb content. But experts at Really Wild Bird Food suggest that every once in a while, it’s a good idea to scatter the corn around your feeder to make sure that the birds return to your garden for the next meal. Like Woody Woodpecker, who loves corn, they’d dash away from your garden and find another one where there’s an abundant supply of their favorite golden-yellow corn.

In a YouTube video, a birder named Mouseli (@MOEYDE) shared footage of their two lovebirds, Angel and Mango, enjoying a half-boiled corncob inside a wire cage. The footage shows two adorable lovebirds, one white-and-green and the other rainbow-toned, pecking on the cob served to them in a blue tray feeder. Another video shows a family of majestic golden-orange zebra finches twittering and chirping excitedly while nibbling corn.

“Many raw vegetables are indigestible to birds, but peas and sweetcorn are fine,” experts at Really Wild Bird Food write, adding that “leftover mashed potatoes” are just as good for the carb supply of hungry birds. They explain that kitchen scraps like corn tend to provide additional essential fats and carbohydrates to the birds, which are especially important for them during the nesting season. “You can simply place them on a bird table or ground feeder, or chop them small and add them to the seed mix in a feeder. You can even mix with suet and press into a plastic container or empty coconut shell to make an easy fat feeder,” they elaborate.

If corn is not available at your local grocery stores, there are other kitchen scraps you can add to your bird feeder to offer a palatable breakfast (or dinner) to your fluffy feathered guests. The list includes items like: stale bread, crusts, cake and biscuits, raw pastry, hard cheeses, cooked eggs, crushed eggshells, cooked pasta, cooked rice, bruised fruits, unsalted nuts, stale cereal or oats soaked in milk. The list is not applicable without one crucial instruction: Clean and sanitize your feeder regularly. When left unclean for a long time, the feeder can invite hordes of rodents, not to mention the sludgy vermin deposits that will instantly repel your bird guests.

Keep in mind, however, one important fact. A Reddit user, u/Akeath, mentioned that most starlings are obsessed with corn. Their mania for corn can affect your songbirds negatively. Oftentimes, a flock of starlings will invade the feeder and start harassing, bullying, and terrorizing other birds to the point that they wouldn’t want to return to your feeder the next time they are hungry.