What Is the Diet of Songbirds?

Summer Diet

• As songbirds are nesting and rearing young, their diet consists primarily of insects and other arthropods which contain mostly protein and fat. Protein helps build body tissues in growing baby birds and helps give endurance to foraging adults.

Fall Diet

• As birds get ready for migration, their diet switches to primarily grains and/or fruits and their appetite increases. This results in deposition of fat under the skin and around body organs. The fat will sustain them over long migratory routes. Miyoko Chu, in "Songbird Journeys," gives the example of bobolinks switching from 90 percent insects in summer to 90 percent grain in fall, with an increased food intake of 38 percent.

Winter Diet

• Songbirds winter in tropical and subtropical areas of Central and South America, where they consume primarily fruits and plant-eating insects. Many migrant songbirds are important in seed dispersal and pollination for tropical trees.

Non-migratory Songbirds

• European songbirds that stay in the same area year-long may have larger brains than migratory songbirds and use innovative techniques to forage for a broadened variety of food during the winter, as reported by Daniel Sol of the University of Barcelona.