What Are You Feeding?

[Dotch]

Just curious. It's getting towards noon and I'm getting hungry...

Seriously, we feed black oil sunflower mixed with a little safflower year round & thistle seed. The orioles and hummers get the 4:1 ratio of sugar water and in winter, suet cakes for the woodpeckers, etc. Ear corn for the pheasants in the winter.

[fishwidow]

We stick pretty much to black sunflower seeds, which brings the largest variety. We also feed suet, both from the meat department and the cakes with different kinds of seed imbedded in them, for woodpeckers and nuthatches. Thistle works for finches and doves in the cities, but never attracts anything at our place up in the north woods.

We also have to be careful of the timing. Full feeders in the early spring bring out the hungry bears. One of the sunflower seed feeders was crushed a few weeks ago. I think we'll fill them back up this weekend.

[MedicDan]

With hmmingbirds, they eyes are more sensitive to bright colors, so if you ever want to attract more you can simply add a couple drops of red food coloring to the water, this works great!

[buzzsaw]

I have 6 stations with bird seed, all of which have black sunflower seeds, a few of them have a dried fruit mix blended in with them... I keep seperate plastic tubs with different mixes. I also go through alot of cracked corn, I'll put this on the ground in an attempt to keep the masses of red winged blackbirds and starlings from going nuts on my feeders.... I'm not sure if it helps much or not. I have three hummingbird feeders, my neighbor has eight of them!! So between the two of us we have those colorful midgets covered! I have those small plastic trays as well, three of them have grape jelly (Orioles, Grey Catbirds), three filled with orange halves, one apple and grape combo. I also have six of those cheap suet holders located everywhere and one log suet holder that you stuff right into the wood (I use a peanut butter blend for this) Three of my bird houses have suet holders on the sides as well and I usually only fill up the side that I can see! I go through an awful lot of suet! I don't make my own, I buy it at the Lakeville Fleet farm.... cheapest I've seen.

I have five finch feeders filled with thistle, some have the premium blend of peanut pick outs and thistle mixed... they love this! I also have a location that I make a pile of corn, peanuts and cracked corn for the critters and birds that choose to eat from this pile... it's always popular with the Blue Jays and Squirrels! Okay last but not least I have three of those holders for peanuts... WHEW!! oh and a bird bath with a water mister/dropper.. they love that as well... I empty the water on a daily basis as it gets pretty dirty from all the baths being taken.... as well as the handfuls of mulch my two year old son puts in there! I'll take pictures in the next day or two and post them so you can see what I have going on for these feathered friends. Over the top you say?? You bet it is! My wife thinks I'm nuts spending all this money on them... but she sure enjoys them singing and flying all over the place, plus all of our family and friends always want to come to our house for events so they can see all the birds buzzin' around.

[M.T. Bucket]

Geez Buzz, no wonder you get so many photo ops! Say, what eats the apples? I've put them out before, but never had much luck.

For me, I've got out:

-3 sunflower seed feeders

-a thistle feeder

-a platform feeder that gets oranges, grape jelly, and sometimes other fruit in the spring and peanuts and corn in the fall and winter

-a hummingbird feeder and an oriole feeder, each with 4:1

-an onion bag filled with yarn and cat hair for nesting materials; goldfinches especially like these

I would like to have a better setup, but with 6 squirrels and up to 20 pigeons showing up at a time, I just can't afford them and I can't have a bird bath because of those !%#$&^% pigeons either.

BTW, ever want to see a chickadee or a nuthatch grin? After ice fishing, dump your leftover waxies in the sunflower seed tray. Once they figure out what you did, the feeding frenzy is something to watch!

[Steve Foss]

We don't bother with thistle (niger) either. At a buck a pound or so, it's darn expensive, and anything that likes thistle (goldfinches, redpolls, etc.) comes in an gobble black oil sunflower.

In winter, it's black oil sunflower in two tray feeders, a tube feeder and a small hanging feeder with a hopper that feeds down into trays on either side. We feed suet as well, and if we can find anyone's frozen crabapples and they don't mind if we nab them, we put them out for the waxwings and grosbeaks (and the odd robin). We also put shelled corn in a separate shelf feeder to keep the squirrels over there and away from the others. Doesn't alway work, but it almost always does.

In spring/fall, we scatter cracked corn all over the ground in the back yard. Sparrows and juncos, mostly being ground feeders, go for it big, more than they do the black oil. Plus, when you've got 429 juncos, white-throated, white-crowned and Harris sparrows on the ground, it's nice to leave a little perching space in the tray feeders for the others.

In summer, we basically put out black oil in one tray and shut down most of the rest. We feed hummers the standard mixture, but don't use red dye. It's not necessary, and we've read that it can be harmful. We also have a birdbath running.

[BLACKJACK]

Two tube black sunflower feeders, two hopper black sunflower feeders, tube thistle feeder, bag thistle feeder, suet in winter, peanuts in summer, orange halves right now, a hummingbird feeder now, and always water. I always tell beginning bird feeders that you'll attract 90% of the birds with black sunflower seeds. We go thru many 50 lb bags in a year...