Don't forget the millet

If any of you do take my advice and make the switch from mixed seed to black oil sunflower, make sure you accommodate the little guys who scratch around under the feeder for certain parts of the mix. Millet is that little round off-white seed that is usually a large part of any mix. It’s a good seed and will attract a few visitors that the sunflower won’t, but in New Brunswick anyway, it isn’t eaten in the same proportions as it’s supplied in the mix, so it ends up piling up under the feeders and growing in the flower beds. Most of my customers buy between 5 and 10 pounds of millet for every 50 pounds of sunflower, if you’re only feeding sparrows you’ll only go through small amounts, it’s when the Mourning Doves find you that you’ll likely go through more. Some people exclude the doves by feeding inside a wire cage, this is more common of pigeons are part of the group, it’s difficult but not impossible to feed Mourning Doves without attracting their close cousin the Rock Pigeon. A cage with bars spaced around 2 ¾ inches works, but this isn’t available commercially so you’ll have to gear up something yourself.

If you just want sparrows and none of the dove clan, 2 inch mesh works fine, I sometimes do this to give the sparrows their own little haven away from the larger birds. It’s not that the Mourning Doves (I never get pigeons) are aggressive, it’s that they are more skittish than some of the sparrows I attract. If someone was to approach the sparrows for a better look or photo, they’d usually be able to get quite close. If there’s a dozen doves in the group, they take off and the wing whistle that acts as a warning sends everyone racing for cover. So I feed some millet inside a cage and some on open platforms, broadcast more on bare patches of lawn and on the edge of gravel driveway where they can eat seeds and pick up grit in one convenient stop.

I’ll throw some sunflower on the platforms or on the ground too, but I try to keep them separate, one of the first clues I use for identifying birds at feeders is what was it eating? One day we had two birds eating on the ground, in the distance they looked like finch but they were eating millet. After thinking about this a while I got my binoculars and checked more closely, they were actually female or immature Indigo Bunting. If they had been eating on mixed seed, I wouldn’t have been so curious and checked them out closer, they would have moved on and I would never have known that I had hosted such a special bird.

I often have the similar Song Sparrow and female Purple Finch in the yard at the same time, while guests are busy studying them with binoculars and scope, I know that one is a Purple Finch because it’s eating sunflower seeds from a mesh feeder and that one is the Song Sparrow because it’s eating millet from the ground. I know it’s not always the way, there’s always a bird that will prove you wrong and eat the seeds it isn’t supposed to, but knowing what the bird is eating is a great clue to it’s identity.

Feeding millet in the winter will attract quite a few species, mostly sparrows, junco and bunting, but if you continue through to the spring migration you’ll be amazed at the variety of sparrows you’ll get. This is where you want one of those good field guides and your binoculars to get good looks and identify such beauties as the Fox Sparrow, (one of my favourite birds), White-crowned Sparrow, with a little practice you’ll be differentiating the Song from the Savannah with ease.

There are several birds that pop up at millet feeders each winter that would be considered fairly rare, last year a Lark Sparrow visited a downtown Moncton feeder for most of the winter, this year there has been a Field Sparrow (photo) and Eastern Towhee, joining the dozen or so species you’d expect at the millet feeder.

So, it’s not that I don’t agree with feeding millet, it’s just that I don’t think it belongs in a tube feeder or as part of a mix. It’s a relatively inexpensive seed that works best when you control where and how much is offered at once.

This Field Sparrow, photographed by Steeve Miouse, showed up this fall on the Acadian Peninsula. You can see he’s enjoying the millet from the array of mixed seed on the ground.