It’s time again to sing the praises of black oil sunflower, at least if the questions I’ve been receiving are any indication. For those of you who’ve recently started reading this column this may help you attract more birds and avoid some common problems associated with bird feeding. For those who’ve been reading since the beginning, this will be a review, hopefully I’ll add some new tips.
At this time of year people are buying feeders for first timers and they’re looking for the best feeder to attract the biggest variety of birds. They’re usually surprised when I recommend sunflower, saying they were thinking more of “regular birdseed”, whatever that is. If you have a tube feeder with sunflower only you will get more birds than the same feeder with mixed seed. Most birds will come to the feeder look in the hole and if all they see is the less desirable seed, then they will head over to the neighbours house. Certain birds will rifle through the seed to get the ones they want but that leads to another host of problems with unwanted birds and rodents eating the spilled seed. A platform feeder will attract a lot of birds with mixed seed but what to do with all the seed nobody wants, you likely paid good money for things that our birds won’t eat like, milo, hulled wheat, oats and barley. Even though our birds eat corn, it’s not the favourite of many and usually gets spilled on the ground. It’s also quite expensive when it comes as part of the mix.
Think of your neighbourhood as a smorgasbord, think of mixed seed as the tray full of frozen peas and carrots, think of the black oil sunflower as the tray of lobster tails and imagine where the line up is. I hear people (especially my family) say, “Oh, that’ll do, if they’re hungry enough they’ll eat it.” I don’t know if that’s ever been true, but these days with so many people feeding and so many people who take better care of birds than they do themselves, I don’t think a chickadee would ever “get hungry enough” to eat milo seed. Birds have wings and birds have ears, so when they hear all the noisy birds fighting over your neighbours choice sunflower, they simply fly on over and get in on the action.
I know all mixed seed isn’t created equally, the general rule of thumb is the blacker the mix the better, (As long as the black is from the sunflower). There are two problems with this though, there are still seeds that some birds don’t like and they will end up on the ground. Most of us don’t mind too much as other birds will clean it up, it’s when the clean up crew turns out to be 30 pigeons and they hang out on your roof waiting for the next job to come along that you start having trouble. If you’re getting sparrows and junco eating the millet under your feeder you can put a little millet off by itself somewhere, this way you aren’t depending on the tube feeding birds to spill enough seeds for the ground feeders or maybe they are spilling too much, attracting unwelcome visitors and killing the grass, I like to have more control over how much seed is out at one time. The sparrows and junco will thank you, they’ll be able to eat their millet without getting pooped on from above.
Most people agree with the straight seed over mixed theory, unfortunately not many of them are the ones selling the seed, so when you go into a store and ask for the best seed to attract birds you’ll likely be handed a mix... by the kid who started working there last week. Sometimes stores push mixes because there is much more money to be made, you can add cheap filler and charge as much or more as the higher quality sunflower seed.
I haven’t sold mixed seed for years, and I spend a lot of time not selling it, explaining the benefits of individual seeds in each area. I have many happy converts and I have many people who I catch with a bag of mixed seed hiding under a blanket in their trunk when I carry their sunflower out. They say it’s “just in case.” I smile, nod and wonder if they really needed the $100 feeder to keep pigeons away or if simply stopping the mix would have worked as well.
I keep trying though, especially with first time feeders, you don’t have much time to get them hooked. If they receive a feeder full of mixed seed and all they attract are starlings, pigeons and rodents, they’re not likely to enjoy the experience and continue. If their first birds are chickadee, nuthatch, goldfinch, grosbeak, cardinal (I actually had a customer who’s very first bird was a Northern Cardinal) they’re much more likely to enjoy feeding and make it a lifelong hobby.
What I recommend for first timers is a decent sunflower feeder, whether it be a tube, mesh or hopper, I’ll usually ask the location it’ll be used, not everyone has to worry about pigeons so they’ll have more options. This gets you started, from there you could add some speciality feeders; if you’re liking the finch that are coming and you want to attract more, you could add a nyjer feeder. If you’re liking the woodpecker, chickadee, nuthatch (or want to attract a few birds that don’t usually eat any seeds), you could add a suet feeder. If you like sparrows and doves, add a ground feeder.
These guys all eat sunflower and the majority of our birds prefer it, the best part is, it’s one of the most inexpensive seeds you’ll feed. If you never feed anything else you’ll still enjoy visits from most of our feeder birds.
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