You can attract certain wild birds to your wildlife area by providing nuts such as peanuts, walnuts, or pecans. You can offer the most common nut, peanut, in many forms: shelled, unshelled, or even peanut butter on their own, in mixes, in suet, or in seed/nut balls. However you offer the peanut, it will attract several kinds of birds.

Quick Tip

Try peanut pieces in a simple wire mesh feeder.

Caution

Peanuts provided for wild birds must be unroasted and unsalted for the safety of the birds, and peanut butter can stick to a bird's wings and prevent flight. Offer peanut butter in smaller quantities, especially in cold weather.

How to Offer

The most simple way to provide peanuts is to buy plain unroasted, unsalted peanut pieces and offer them in a simple wire mesh nut feeder.

However, you can also buy peanuts mixed in with other seeds, nuts, and fruit, or buy a suet cake that includes peanuts. You can also build your own seed/nut ball, roll a pinecone in peanut butter, or buy an edible feeder.

Unshelled vs. Shelled

Whole peanuts can be a favorite with larger birds with stronger beaks but also with squirrels.

Shelled peanuts, or peanut pieces, are a favorite with most birds, especially woodpeckers and chickadees. Each form provided on their own has a different nut feeder available -- shelled peanuts are less wasted in a fine wire mesh dispenser.

Peanut Butter

Birds love the energy boost from inexpensive peanut butter just as much as the gourmet kind. The three most common ways of providing peanut butter are rolled pine cones, commercial peanut butter feeders, and drilled logs.

You can do either the log or cone yourself. The drilled logs or peanut butter feeders usually consist of holes you can bury the peanut butter in and perches by the holes of the birds. As an alternative to peanut butter, you can also try sunflower spread.

What Kind?

In general, peanuts attract blue jays, chickadees, titmice, woodpeckers, cardinals, finches, grosbeaks, juncos, nuthatches, and more. In the shell, peanuts attract specifically woodpeckers, blue jays, titmice, nuthatches, cardinals, and crows.