It is exciting, and it’s worth the effort. It will take you some time it’ll take you some determination and, most of all, never lose their trust. There’s nothing more exhilarating than feeding wild birds just to have a wild animal trust you enough to land on your hand, take food from you and interact with them. It’s just exhilarating.
It’s actually quite easy to get these guys to start doing this from you, but it does take some time. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot of Patience, so here are a couple of tricks that you can do to get these birds to feed from your hand.
1. Feeding Birds
You’ve got to start by feeding birds. That’s the first step,
set up a feeder and start giving them what’s their favorite high-quality food. Mostly it will be suet or black oil sunflower seeds. That’s what
keeps them coming back and again, so that’s the first thing you want to start feeding them.
2. Get used to your presence
If they’re coming to feed, be near the feeder, so that’s a critical step. In some cases being close works, but usually, it won’t work. This is because they’re not used to your presence.
Start by 20-30 feet away. If you see they’re coming and you’re standing there, that’s a great move.
After getting them used to you, you want to move closer to the feeder gradually. If they’re not coming, that’s too close, so it’s in Patience.
3. Be Patient:
Develop your Patience because, well, the birds are not used to eating out of your hand, so get them used to you by getting closer and doing it regularly. It might be a few days, a few weeks, until they’re used to you, being arm’s length from the feeder, and they’re coming, you’ve accomplished them getting used to you.
4. Seed in hands:
The next natural progression is to put a little seed in your hand and have them come to you, now this is a very slow process, and it will take some patience, probably about a week or two of just having the seeds in your hand and having them do mock fly-ups where they’d fly towards the hand at the last second they’d pull off and go back to the safety of the branches.
So this is pretty natural because it’s still a wild animal. It’s a little hesitant, but eventually, there’ll be that one brave soul that’ll come land on the hand, take a seed, and then the floodgates will open all of them will come one by one. In fact, they’ll start competing for the right to land on your hand and take the food now.
5. Empty the feeder:
Before you fill the feeder when it is empty, come to the feeder with some food, they’re not going to come around or stick around very long if there’s no food. Naturally, they’re going for some other food source,
so when the feeder is empty, call them.
6. Wiggle your thumb:
If the only food available is in your hands, one of the tricks is moving your thumb, but don’t move your hands. That works well. They respond to movement so moving your thumb is like saying, “Hey! Hey! right here” “look, there’s food right here.”
And then they pick up on that. Once you get one bird coming, it’s so much
easier for others to come.
7. Be Consistent:
If you’ve made the big jump, it doesn’t mean they’ll come easily after that. Once you make the jump, get them used to you, and sometimes you need to wait till your hands are too cold and it won’t work, come back another day after they’ve emptied the feeder, and try it again and again, it’ll take some patience, but Patience is rewarding.
8. Let them perch:
They like to be able to perch, be near the feeder, or a branch, plan on giving them a place to perch, sometimes they much rather land on a branch and not leave the branch, and then they can reach right into hands, so they don’t have to land on your hand.
That’s a way to bridge that hesitation of actually landing on hands,
and then when you get used to them, sometimes if you put seeds on the hat, they’ll land on it and pick that.
You can also do it with new people once they are comfortable with you, so if you can get birds coming to people who come as visitors, that’s always a nice treat.
9. Never lose their trust:
If they’re landing in your hand and you make a quick movement, you will get them scared of you. So a quick movement is a danger, don’t ever do a quick movement, and don’t lose their trust.
10. Always reward them:
Always reward them. Just keep a handful of seeds as walking around the orchard. If they come towards you, reward them because it strengthens that connection you made, and birds will be happy around you.
How to get young ones to trust you:
Once you get the birds, you must get the young ones used to it. So first, they’ll hesitate, but they see the parents coming to eat, and they make the connection, and then it becomes generation after generation.
It is exciting, and it’s worth the effort. It will take you some time
it’ll take you some determination and, most of all, never lose their trust.