Wild Bird Seed

torbrex

I have a question about wild bird seed.

I love to watch the antics of the birds at the feeding station I supply in my garden, but I have noticed recently that a lot of the seeds I put in the feeder are just pushed away by the birds and end up on the ground below. Some of them are swept up by the ground feeders but a lot are just left. (some of which germinate :mad:)
I have tried different type and brands of seeds from the cheap ones in Home Bargains and Poundland to the expensive brand named ones from the garden centres and mail order but they are all treated the same by the birds.

Any recommendations?

The nuts, fat balls and suet blocks that I put out are gobbled up by all the visitors to an extent that my neighbour recons the birds are better fed than he is

roddydogs

Dont worry, the Pigeons or Squirrels will soon scoff it up.

pink_poppy

Our local pet shop has 'premium' bird seed which is pretty good so it might be worth a look in your local one?? I haven't bought it for a while but I don't remember it being too expensive.

I've bought the Home Bargains stuff (not great), Poundland Bill Oddie (not great but some of the mixes are better that the HB stuff-seem to remember the Autumn mix went down well) & Poundland National Trust nutritious mix (better than the other 2 mentioned here). The black sunflower seeds from HB are not popular.

I've also been feeding 'my' birds Tesco Value mixed dried fruit - the blackbirds love it & will come to me to be fed individually

ljonski

You could make your own fatballs using suet, or lard etc and then crumble some off for the robins who find fatballs too big for them Hth

jenie_2

I have a feeding station and find that the birds seem to ignor the mixed seeds, so I no longer buy them. Favourites are sunflower seeds, fat balls and peanuts. I also put bread and sliced apple or pear on the ground under the feeder. We see a good variety of birds every day, I love watching them.

carbbit

I used to find this too and started buying the premium high energy, no mess seed from the local garden centre and find that the birds tend to eat all of this.

Barneysmom

Mine don't like oats but will eat mostly everything else.
they get what they're given or go hungry/elsewhere

They get our scrap cakes, bread, meat fat, shop-bought seeds and will eat through till tomorrow. If I had one of those garden feeders we'd go broke within a month.

silverjay

Is there anything that pigeons absolutely hate? I am having problems with a bullying pigeon who stalks the feeders and pushes the smaller birds out of the way. I have moved the feeders today as he was sitting on the branch and eating everything. I had been wondering why the feeders had been emptied every day.

I usually get big bags of the Bill Oddie (purple) mix from Wilkos at £2.19/2kg but the sparrows and bluetits do toss out what they don't like. In the winter I used a 2/3 black sunflower to 1/3 mixed seed mixture as the tits particularly love the black sunflower seed, but not the stripey ones. I also crumble fat balls up and mix them in as well.

Will try the mixed fruit for the blackbirds although we don't have so many of those at the moment.

emiff6

At this time of year there are lots of seeds for birds to eat, from wild grasses and wildflowers to oats, wheat, and barley in the fields, so at feeder stations they get fussy. I have found that greenfinches in particular will take only sunflowers, and then only eat the very tip (the bit where the seed would start to shoot), and drop the rest.

So at this time of year I don't put out seed, like Pink Poppy I feed dried fruit (soaked), apple peel and cores, grapes (the inevitable ones at the bottom that get overripe or start to go bad), biscuit crumbs, and occasional mealworms. (All on the ground).

Pigeons don't eat any of this stuff, so they give up coming, as do most of the finches except sparrows. I still get blackbirds, and the occasional chaffinch, and dunnocks, who like the biscuit crumbs, then stay and eat the greenfly.

I don't start to feed seeds again until towards the end of September, and the seed eaters gradually return until by the end of Oct all the regular species are back again.

crumblepie

The birds by me are a fussy lot and don't eat the mixed bird seed. Like the OP most of it ends up on the ground so I don't bother any more. Even in the depths of winter it would stubbornly not be eaten. I'm not getting many birds in the garden now due them feeding elsewhere so I only put out a few peanuts and sunflower seeds.

They loved the suet blocks and fat balls, but weren't taken with my home made efforts.

I only have a sparrow and a couple of coal tits to feed at the moment, but like everything else I'm buying stuff on offer now ready for the winter.

torbrex

Thanks for all the input guys

I will look for more specialised seeds rather than the mixtures and concentrate on keeping the nuts and fat balls out there.

I dont have pidgeons or squirrels in my garden so no problems that way but also no clean-up service I had not thought about fruit for the ground feeding birds, I will need to check out a cheap source as there is little or no wasted fruit in my house.

I am also going to look at making some kind of base for my station or something halfway down to catch the spillage.