If you fancy feeding wild birds, winter may seem the best time to offer up vittles. But you might be surprised to hear when extra food is most beneficial to your feathered friends.

Most birds need bonus calories any time they could use an energy boost, like during high and low temperature extremes, spring and fall migrations and lean times in the winter and early spring. Summer nesting is also an energy drain.

Nectar-eaters, like hummingbirds and orioles, benefit from extra nips of nectar along the way as they migrate north from the tropics in January and arrive at the Great Lakes in May. The same holds true when these small but mighty migrators head south in the fall.

It looks like year-round rotations of seed, suet and nectar would hit the spot in the more than 100 species of North American birds that frequent feeders.