Worms not just for early birds

When we're talking mealworms (which is not very often), we're talking big numbers.

Mealworms are the caviar of the bird-food world. My friend Jennifer Rae babies her backyard bluebirds with daily allowances of what the birds should consider a special — and nourishing — treat.

Mealworms are a serious source of protein for buntings, chickadees, grosbeaks, nuthatches, orioles, robins, yellow-rumped warblers, house wrens, and Rae's bluebirds.

You can buy worms alive or dried. Rae's are alive, the form preferred by most users.

People have been offering these inch-long worms to birds for years. Carrol Henderson wrote about this in his 1995 book "Wild About Birds." Henderson heads the nongame wildlife division of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

He was writing about feeding the worms to bluebirds, an insect-eating species. Insect availability depends on weather conditions — cold spring or heavy rain can interfere with foraging. Mealworms can help, particularly when adults are feeding chicks. Worms also simply add nutrition to a bird's daily diet in any weather.

"We buy several containers of 500-count mealworms at a time," Rae told me recently. "We store the worms in the fridge," she said, "taking them out every few days to feed them apple slices and carrots.

"The worms get big and juicy," she said.

(The worms must be fed. Apples and carrots are recommended. Feed them, then return them to torpidity until their number comes up.)

Big business

A call to my local bird store, Wild Birds Unlimited in Minnetonka, turned up big sales numbers for live worms (kept in a fridge there). Melissa Block, store manager, told me her store sold 1.5 million worms in 2015. You don't buy a few at a time; they come by the small tub (500 per), which makes it easy to tally a million.

The store also sells dried worms, most of them imported from China. Block said the dried worms sell in much smaller numbers. "Birds will eat them if they have to," she said, "but offer those same birds live worms and you can forget about the dried ones."

Worms and crickets are essential to the care offered by the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota in Roseville. Last June, the center spent $11,000 for angleworms, crickets, mealworms and waxworms. It bought 490 angleworm packets (for robins), 420,000 crickets (for amphibians and reptiles), 1,165,000 live mealworms and 31,000 waxworms.

The numbers come from Tami Vogel, communications director at the center. These purchases were made from the Bug Co.

I didn't know about the Bug Co., a local enterprise that's been selling live insect food for birds, reptiles and amphibians since 1947. Its Minnesota production facility is in Ham Lake.

It sells tens of millions of worms each year from three national locations, according to Don Haukom, sales director. Asked about the particulars of the worm business, he responded as Col. Sanders would if asked for his chicken recipe.

Mealworms do not provide complete nourishment for birds. A limited quantity each day is recommended. Put your worms near other feeders in a small dish with an inch or two of depth. Live worms will attempt to make a run for it.

Grow your own

You can raise your own worms. You begin with adult worms or beetles, which the worms eventually become. The worms need food, drink, warm temperatures and bedding changed weekly, like a visiting brother-in-law. Once harvested, you store worms in the fridge.

If you're really interested and want to learn more, check out http://mealwormcare.org/breeding.

But it sounds like work to me, time better invested in watching birds.

Read Jim Williams' birding blog at startribune.com/wingnut.