Learn How to Hand tame Wild Birds in Your Garden

Hand taming wild birds

This will be a project for people with lots of patience, but once you have gained the wild birds trust, the time you spent on it will definitely be greatly rewarded. Having one of our fine feathered friends land in your hand for the first time, will certainly be heartfelt and fondly remembered.

The technique is essentially an easy task to perform: Just let the birds get used to your presence around your feeding stations, and eventually they will trust you enough to feed directly form your hand.

To get the best and fastest results is to start hand taming during the winter time, when they need and depend on you the most for food. For example if you live in an area where snow storms occurs, chose a morning after a big storm to walk up to one your snowed in feeding station and hold out a hand full of seeds and nuts, and it should not take more than 20 minutes or less to have a bird land in your hand to snatch a few seeds.

Hand taming is always harder to do during the spring and summer months when food are in an abundance, and the birds are looking for quick food sources to feed themselves and their young ones with. It is also better to try in early morning and late afternoon when the birds are feeding more actively.

Now, if you do not have big winter storms around, the best and quickest way is to empty all your feeding stations the night before. Walk up to one of your unroofed feeders; they will work the best because you can rest your hand in it while you are waiting. Then take a handful of nuts and seeds and lay your hand in the feeder, either standing or sitting as still as you possibly can. Totally avoid any eye contact with the birds, because even a small movement of your eyes can scare them away.

First you will notice that they will fly towards the feeding station, but soon realize that you are there and veer away quickly. Birds like chickadees will get some what upset with you and give you a scolding, but do not discouraged and just keep on standing motionless.

Hopefully within 20 minutes you should notice the birds getting braver, and start to land close to your hand or even on it. .Once you get one bird to come to you, there will be many more to follow. But if you for some reason have not succeeded in having any birds fly up to you within 1-2 hours, take a well deserved brake by backing away from the feeding station slowly, and try again later.

The more you practice this little ritual, the more the birds will associate you as a food source, and you will be able to move about without scaring them away. Now, when you have reached that point you can start carrying food treat in your pocket, and offer it to them, whenever you encounter them in your lovely bird feeding garden.

A fun idea as well is to wear a hat with a large brim and put bird treats on the brim or the crown of the hat, and you will have a chickadee hood ornaments in no time.HAVE FUN!!!

Here is a list of the easiest to the most difficult birds to hand tame and which seeds to tempt them with:

Chickadees Unsalted raw peanuts, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds

Woodpeckers Suet, walnuts and or pecan, sunflower seeds

Titmice Unsalted raw peanuts, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds

Crossbills Pine nuts, striped sunflower seeds

Bluebirds Mealworms, crumbled peanut butter-cornmeal mixture

Jays Walnuts, pecans, bread pieces