Your backyard birds are always hungry. Here are a few ideas from your pantry that don’t involve bird seed. You can feed foods that are high in fat.

Food at the bird feeder can attract animals other than the wild birds, so place the feeder close enough that you can watch the birds and monitor the feeder but not close enough for critters to make a dash for your house and scare a bird-watching pet bird inside the house.

Keep bird feeders cleaned

You should clean the bird feeder every time you clean your bird’s food dishes or at least twice a month. For the nectar or jelly feeders, they should be cleaned more frequently.  The backyard birds can get very sick from ingesting moldy or rancid food.

Here are some of non-seed additions to your wild bird feeder:

Suet: It is beef fat. It is a tantalizing high-energy wild bird treat that can be purchased in raw chunks or flavored cakes and plugs. Suet cake flavors range from peanut to sunflower to fruit. Wild birds are most attracted to the peanut butter flavor. Wild birds that eat suet include woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, warblers, tanagers and orioles.

Nectar: Natural nectar can be found in plants. They contain sucrose, glucose and fructose. Natural plant nectars are 21-25 percent sugar. The recipe that most closely resembles natural plant nectar is four parts boiling water to one part sugar. Only put nectar out for birds after it cools. Never use honey, artificial sweetener, or red food coloring for homemade nectar as it can hurt the birds. Wild birds that eat nectar are hummingbirds, orioles, house finches and woodpeckers.

Grape jelly is good for wild birds, not pet birds

Grape jelly: Although you can feed this to your wild birds, do not feed this to your pet birds due to the high sugar content. The jelly does not need to be fancy and should be offered in small, brightly colored dishes.

The orioles eat grape jelly. Change the dish often because the ants love the grape jelly also.

Mealworms:  A nice protein addition to the wild bird feeder is mealworms. You can buy mealworms at pet bird stores or any big box store. The wild birds that eat mealworm are chickadees, nuthatches, bluebirds, Northern cardinals, thrashers, gray catbirds, warblers and American robins.

Popcorn:  Serve the birds just as you prepare for your pet birds – popped but no salt and no butter.  There is no real nutritional value, but it is fun to eat.  Wild birds that eat this treat include European starlings, grackles, crows and maybe geese.

Fresh fruit:  Fruit provides much needed nutrition for wild birds. When placing the fresh fruit for the wild birds, offer only good fruit, throw it out before it becomes rancid and then clean your bird feeder. Oranges attract orioles, house finches, Northern cardinals, robins, gray catbirds, thrashers, jays, woodpeckers and blackbirds. Old bananas and melon attract fruit flies, which attract hummingbirds.

Peanut butter: This is a great source that offers high-protein to wild birds, especially during the winter season. You can mix it with cornmeal to create a dry dough, then place the dough in a suet cage in clumps on a platform feeder or spread it on the side of a tree. Wild birds that eat peanut butter include Carolina wrens, Northern cardinals, brown thrashers, chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers.

Eggshells:  People with pet birds know already that crushed eggshells can be a beneficial supplement to a female bird’s diet during the breeding season to help replace calcium lost during the egg-laying process. When offering eggshells to any birds, sterilize them first.

Boil the eggshells for 10 minutes, bake them at 250 degrees for 20 minutes in a conventional oven or microwave them for six minutes.  After the eggshells have been sterilized, crush them up until they are about the size of a peanut or sunflower seed so wild birds of all sizes can eat them. Place them under the bird feeder or on a tray mixed with wild bird seed.

Susan La Fountaine is a Master Gardener in Sandusky and Ottawa Counties with the Ohio State University Extension Offices.

This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Master Gardener: Backyard birds are hungry for more than bird seed