This young Eurasian blue tit enjoys feeding on a suet cake hanging from a bird feeder. ARTERRA/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Americans love birds. More than 57 million U.S. households set out bird food in their yards, hoping to help our fine feathered friends while being able to admire them up close. And one of the top bird foods purchased is suet.
Suet is a hard, white fat that forms around the kidneys and loins in cattle and sheep. Until the mid-20th century, the British regularly used suet in savory puddings, dumplings and pies, as it adds lightness and fluff to various dishes (similar to shortening in the U.S.) But in America, suet has typically been sold as bird food, specifically suet cakes.
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It was December, 1925, and a blizzard raged outside Ada Clapham Govan’s Lexington, Massachusetts, window. Somehow, despite the wind, a faint
chickadee-dee-dee reached her ears. The bird’s jaunty call broke through Govan’s despair, and she managed to scatter some breadcrumbs for the storm-tossed visitor clinging to her icy porch rail. It snatched up a few morsels, disappeared briefly, then returned “with every relative and friend” to devour more handfuls of her offerings. “The elation, the spiritual uplift I sensed in that moment,” she later wrote, “marked the re-birth of hope.”