A seedy business


Over the last few years, I have tried many different types of bird seed from budget to costly. This is what I  have learned.

Not all birdseed is created equal.

I am no self proclaimed bird guru by far. I am a novice bird watcher. I am just someone who likes seeing birds come to my yard and once in a while I manage to take a halfway decent picture. In my experience,  shopping bird seed from dollar stores, Ace Hardware, Walmart, Sam's, Home Depot, Lowes, and Tractor Supply, there is one glaring issue.  Not all bird seed is created equal. Cheap bird seed, mixes and even single seed bags all come in their own quality. So I switched to buying smaller bags of premium seeds, which were a big hit, but expensive to keep the feeders filled so I  had to regulate how much and how many days the seed needed to last. I also learned that premium seeds are also not created equally.




What the dust?
I started out buying cheap/affordable wild bird seed mixes. They seemed to be extra dusty and dry. When you poured out the contents a plume of dust rose up from the ingredients. The birds really didn't seem to want to eat it. Quite frankly, when I poured it out and a plume of dust appeared, I was like, that can't be right, and figured they probably wouldn't eat it and I was correct. Most of it got shoveled onto the ground. But I couldn't afford to just chuck those big economy bags of bird seed so I continued to use them until we got through the bag. Less songbirds visited the backyard. The mourning doves, squirrels and rabbits helped to eat what was being shoveled out of the feeders. When it rained we had lots more birds eating the seed on the ground, possibly now because it had enough moisture?

 I thought for sure the squirrels would eat it with its claims: 
Excellent food source for squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer and other wildlife
Distracts small animals away from your bird feeders
Attract a wide variety of small animals to your backyard.
Yeah, unfortunately none of the above happened and it literally all ended up on the ground beneath the squirrel feeder which is at the far end of the yard away from the bird feeders. The birds, possum, and raccoon also ignored it.


The pepper blend
For $12 you certainly hope that the product will work as described, but nope, this did not slow down the squirrels at all.



Saffron seed, not so much.
When the squirrels became a bit of a nuisance,  I was advised to use saffron seeds. I was told "Squirrels don't like them and birds will eat it." I bought a big 'ole bag and put it in the squirrel feeder and a few of the bird feeders. After a few days of the squirrels checking the feeders, shoveling through it, they became resigned that the saffron seed was what was on the menu and with just a slight reluctance, ate the saffron seed like people eat popcorn. The birds barely touched it. So after this epic fail, I  looked at the bags a little more closely and tried getting better quality seed.

Millet seed,  red and white.
I started trying different brands of seeds after watching some YouTube videos and reading blogs. What I found was that there were little red and white round balls left at the bottom of some of the feeders, even though the bag said premium seeds. This was millet seed. Basically a filler seed that the birds and squirrels also didn't care for. What was even more of a surprise was that it made up a significant portion of the so called premium seeds.

Sunflower seeds
At this point, even though we have cardinals in the backyard, I never purchased sunflower seeds on their own. Sunflowers seeds were always a part of the mixed seeds. I was fine with this until I started getting sunflowers popping up around the garden habitat and under the feeders. I deployed plastic rain gutters to help catch most of the dropped seeds. It didn't totally solve the problem but we had less sunflowers.



We received a cardinal red collapsible feeder from a sponsor so now I am considering buying the black oil sunflower seeds on their own. But will need to hang a platform feeder to catch the seed hulls. I am not sure if it is squirrel proof or not but it looks really neat and will be a beautiful addition to the garden habitat.

UPDATE: hung the new feeder on the fence near the Dahoon holly tree and the squirrels are basically eating the whole contents.  Raily get to see the cardinals enjoy it. Gonna have to move it to the PVC feeder.

Suet

Suet is a tricky treat in Florida.  Most of the moist ones seem to get mold on it in our climate within a few days of putting it out. I guess the hot humid weather doesn't help. I put out suet and peanuts when we entered our Florida winter in the hopes of it being cool  enough to keep fresh and for dissuading the growing amount of cowbirds coming to the feeders.

mockingbird on suet cage


(Florida winters come with temperatures varying from the low 80s to the low 30s from one day to the next) I spray it off so it does not get too moldy. Deploying the suet was helping until I tried reintroducing the regular seed and unfortunately we were back to square one. The cowbirds were once more back in droves. I was looking for honey seed suet to replace the moist suet but this last trip out I couldn't find any. So for the first time, I purchased mealworm suet cakes for the woodpecker and hopefully the occasional blue jay. The squirrels devoured the worm cakes and woodpecker cakes. I have tried mini suet balls in the platform and tube feeders and it also seemed to go very quickly. I may start adding it to the seed mixes around the yard.

Mockingbird eating suet

Another thing I try to avoid is seed with corn in it. The squirrels don't seem to care for it and after pulling corn stalks out of my yard, I now only give the squirrels crushed corn chips as a treat sometimes. The birds, butterflies and squirrels also get fresh fruit like apple skins, and grapes, that won't pass the mother in law test. In spring they will get bananas peels as I  saw a video where someone added them to her homemade butterfly feeders.


Thank you for visiting thebitboproject blog. Don't forget to join me on Twitter, FB and IG @thebitboproject
Live feed and videos are at cbsobirdcams.com



Location: Orlando, FL, USA

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