Attract More Robins To Your Yard With A Clever Feeding Hack

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Food, water, and shelter make quite a reliable trifecta for bringing songbirds to your yard and garden. Planting fruit-bearing shrubs such as black raspberry bushes can attract a variety of songbirds, including the ever-popular American robin. However, these plants only offer berries in the summer. If you want to attract robins at other times of year, you'll need to serve some of their other favorite foods. In addition to learning what your local robins prefer, make sure to present their snacks in the way they find most appealing: scattered on the ground.

Robins view your lawn as a big platter, and they're not worried about dirt, bugs, or worms. In fact, several types of worms are delicacies for these songbirds. Once they've finished pulling earthworms from your garden, they'll be delighted to find mealworms placed in a ground-based tray or even dispersed on your patio. Mealworms are especially important for robins that are raising babies since additional protein is required for this task. You can also tuck mealworms and other robin-friendly foods among rocks and tree roots. These talented foragers will not only find them but also appreciate the element of surprise. This strategy works with other foods robins love as well, from berries to bits of suet.

Understanding robins' ground-foraging habits provides valuable insight for backyard bird-feeding. Robins often spend their days exploring piles of fallen foliage. That's because leaf piles are a common hiding place for the insects they love to devour. When you have snacks for your neighborhood robins, tuck them inside little mounds of leaves and then watch the magic happen. Mealworms, fruit chunks, and suet pellets can all be shared in this way to boost the number of robins visiting your property.

For a less messy option, use a ground-based tray feeder to serve the treats you've selected. The compact Aelan Mesh Bird Feeder Tray is made of rust-resistant metal, while the Mixxidea Wooden Ground Bird Feeder looks like a miniature picnic table and holds 5 pounds of bird food. If you'd rather not buy a tray feeder,  find a shallow baking pan, put holes in the bottom to help rainwater escape, and place it on a tree stump or another low-to-the-ground surface. Fill the pan with robin-luring goodies such as raisins and berries, and clean it often to prevent bacteria or disease buildup.

You can also try attracting ground-feeding birds with a platform feeder. Many platform feeders are designed for hanging above the ground but still appealing to robins and other ground foragers. Placing apple chunks or other fruit in this type of feeder and hanging it near a fruit tree robins visit in summer can help attract more of these birds to your yard.