The Best Seed For Birds
The Best Seed For Birds
It may be too cold to spend much time outside, but when you feed the birds a good quality seed you’re rewarded with a yard full of color and motion, and less mess for you! Inexpensive seed mixes often contain fillers such as golden or red millet, wheat, oats or other grains that most birds don’t eat. What happens to these seeds when you put them on your feeder? The birds push them to the ground, where they form a messy layer that can attract rodents.
There are many types of seed mixes for birds; some are blended to attract certain species such as cardinals or woodpeckers. If you want to keep it simple and feed all types of birds, use the shelled sunflower blend that Country Garden offers. It is 80% shelled sunflower seeds and 20% in-the-shell black oil seed. As you can see from the photos below, all the birds love it, and less shells mean less mess under your feeders.
In this photo you can see cardinals, juncos, flickers, chickadees, blue jays and more. All are here to enjoy the shelled sunflower seed. The blend of 80% shelled and the rest unshelled means less buildup of shells under your feeder. This is important when you have feeders near a garden as seen in this photo – sunflower shells have allelopathic properties – this means that they produce a chemical that inhibits the growth of plants.
We find that when we put the extra fine sunflower chips in the finch feeder, we not only attract finches but woodpeckers too. The cardinal in this photo looks on but his beak is too large to take food out of this feeder.
Even the bluebirds love shelled sunflower seed.
Come into the store to see the wide range of seed mixes we offer, and choose the one that makes sense to you.
This red bellied woodpecker often has the feeder to himself…the Big Beak rules! This photo shows what the “premium blend” sunflower mix looks like – mostly shelled seeds but some still in the shell.
When you feed the birds your yard can be as filled with color as it is in the summer when the flowers are in bloom.
Subscribe To Our Newsletter
Sign up for our weekly email about sales and events.