Best Bird seeds?

[BugBear99]

Would appreciate any advice on bird seed...I live in East London, and over the last 18months have transformed an overgrown nettle-strewn small garden into a wildlife haven (well, nearly - just the pond is half-built, the rest is there!). Over those 18m the birds visiting my garden have gradually increased in number/variety. Started with pigeons (!), starlings, blue tits, great tits. Now add to that robins, rare wren (my favourite), blackbird, long-tailed tits (missing currently but frequent in winter on fat balls), house sparrows, and more recently green finches and (hoorah, another favourite!) a juvenile goldfinch. Oh and the occasional hungry sparrowhawk

I feed fat-balls throughout the year, which are popular with the blue/great/longtailed tits, sparrows & starlings. For the last 5m I have used a 'native finch seed' (Haith's; includes hemp seeds & niger seeds) in my giant seed feeder, because I wanted to try a seed mix without sunflower seeds, otherwise my garden gets overrun with squirrels. To begin with this wasn't very popular, but now it's moderately popular with the sparrows, greenfinches and great tits (and the juvenile goldfinch but haven't seen him recently), but I was wondering what everyone else uses as their seed mix? Living where I do, I want to try and maximise the attraction from native finch species, and be less attractive to starlings (!), squirrels and pigeons (yeah, tricky!). And I am desperate to get regular goldfinches to visit!!!

Should I continue with the seed mix I have got?! Is there anything else I should add/do?

[Phil Whiley]

Hi,

Just found this message and thought I would reply, even if it's a few days late.

I get Goldfinches most of the year, the best food is Niger or Thistle seed, for which you can get special feeders in which the holes are too fine for most other birds. However, I also get Goldfinches on my other feeders which I generally use Sunflower Hearts in. However, it did take quite a while for the Goldfinches to become regular visitors, so be patient! I find many birds go for the Sunflower Hearts, I get flocks of Greenfinches, and also get Siskins and Redpolls during the colder months. Unfortunately so do the Starlings of course, and the local Squirrel, and I even get Wood Pigeons doing thier best to cling and get a feed.

I think the only way to stop the Squirrels and larger birds is to restrict the access. You can get feeders with stout metal cages surrounding them, many garden centres sell them. They are usually described as "Squirrel proof", but will also stop Starlings etc getting to the feeders.

Good luck in getting the Goldfinches in.

Regards
Phil

[Tringa]

I find sunflowers hearts to be the best in feeders. They are liked by all the birds, even the few Goldfinches we get will often eat them even though there is a nijer feed close by.

The feeders unfortunately will not attract the ground feeders, but if you have a lot of pigeons, then perhaps that is a price worth paying.

In our garden the order of preference is

live mealworms, by a mile, - everything eats them including the squirrels,

sunflower hearts - everything, except starilings. They will eat them but really go for anything with fat in it, then

fat cakes/balls.

Have a look at CJ Wildbirdfood for cages for feeders. Without them all feeders including, in time, even metal ones are just a minor annoyance as far as squirrels are concerned.


Dave