Did any birds finally eat the canary seed mix?

All About Birds says:
"This is very popular with House Sparrows and cowbirds, so should not be offered. Other species that eat canary seed are equally happy with sunflower. "

Of course, not everyone is so opposed to House Sparrows and cowbirds.

Claire

No, they ate almost none of it.

As for sparrows, I have only ever seen ONE sparrow here, and it was a song sparrow. I do like the song sparrows. I'm not sure how a house sparrow would behave differently from a song sparrow, but unless they crowd out other birds I wouldn't mind them. I've seen no cowbirds nor even any grackles, which is like a miracle. I hate grackles.

I finally resorted to mixing the canary seed mix with a "songbird" mix my son bought that is mostly sunflower seeds with some peanuts and dried fruit mixed in. They seem to be eating it. The canary seed mix itself does have a fair amount of sunflower chips in it and a teensy bit of nyjer.

I put it in a wire mesh feeder at first and the goldfinches did visit it some, but they really were eating very little of it. Then I tried putting it in the tube feeder but the sunflower chips were too large for that. So I dumped it out of that and mixed it with the songbird mix my son brought home and put it in the Squirrel Buster (which is a normalish hopper-style feeder with perches around it) and they do seem to be eating it. Of course they are probably picking out the sunflower seeds, peanuts, fruit, and sunflower chips, and scattering most of the rest, but that is fine.

I will never buy this seed again, you can rely on that, LOL!

It is a high protein seed - which I remembered, and that is why I thought it would be good - but I forgot the part about "not palatable to most birds", LOL!

Now the wire mesh feeder and the tube feeder are both filled with nyjer - but I'm not seeing any goldfinches for the past few days. I hope they will come back! I am still getting house finches. I haven't seen a song sparrow for awhile either - though there may have been some and I just didn't grab the binoculars to be sure whether it was a house finch or a song sparrow. I haven't seen any juncos for awhile, they may have moved on by now, though I think at least some of them stay in the area until they migrate again.

I only see cardinals when I scatter seed on the ground - for some reason they don't seem to like the Squirrel Buster. Maybe it is too close to the side of the house. I will have to put up a new hook a little further back and see if that helps.

I put my hummingbird feeder out yesterday - I should have put it out at least a week ago, maybe even 2 weeks ago. I hope it will eventually attract some hummers but it took the birds almost 6 months to find my other feeders so - who knows. And we will be moving in June, so I will have to start all over again somewhere else. Saaaad.

Picture of a song sparrow below:

Great picture of the Song Sparrow, zensojourner!

You don't say where you live; here in Southeastern MA the goldfinches are mostly staying away from the nyjer feeders now. This happens every year - in the winter lots of goldfinches, but when spring and breeding season arrive the males get territorial and don't hang around together. I'll only see one or two a day.

The native sparrows also don't come as often. Maybe they're eating the insects that are out now that it's warmer.

I hope the new area you move to will have lots of birds!

Claire

Not my picture! It's a wiki open license picture (eg freely distributed).

Won't the females still need to eat? I just bought a big bag of nyjer, they were going through it so fast before!

I'm not sure how many birds I'm going to see after the move - it's in the desert!

I'm guessing the females as well as the males are finding food somewhere else. I've read that they eat buds so this is a good time for that.

I spread nyjer on the ground and the native sparrows and juncos like it, not to mention the turkeys and doves, so you can always just broadcast it. I

'm trying to imagine a turkey clinging to a mesh feeder (not seriously). I have seen a turkey attack a nyjer sock and tear a hole in it. I can't resist adding these pictures, I hope you don't mind.

How to eat those little bitty seeds:

It's swinging, maybe if I hit it again I can break it:

There should be a whole different bunch of interesting birds in the desert!

Claire

OK, how are you getting more than one picture in your posts? Are you having to code native HTML?

Anyway ...

The goldfinches are back and have been for several days now. I wanted to be sure they were back before I got excited about it, LOL! I think maybe they were busy molting as they are now showing their spring/summer colors. A few are still a little scruffy looking but in the main they appear to have finished molting.

I have discovered that the reason my tube feeder empties out faster than my mesh feeder (both are filled with nyjer) is at least partly because for every seed a bird grabs, 2 or 3 more spill out on the ground. Which explains why there are mourning doves under that feeder most of the time.

The mesh feeder doesn't seem to spill nearly so much, especially not in a wind (as it was VERY windy today). So there is very little seed spilled from that feeder, but a lot of hulls. So mourning doves aren't bothering with that even though it's over concrete and the other is over grass.

Not only that, but it turns out that the house finches can't feed at the wire mesh feeder. Their bills are too large to get through the mesh. I've seen the odd house finch land, cling, and give it a peck or two, and then give up and move to the tube feeder or the sunflower seed feeder (usually the latter).

So - BONUS! Essentially that wire mesh feeder is a goldfinches only feeder. The house finches will chase goldfinches away from the tube feeder once in awhile, but they never bother with the wire mesh feeder. Seems like a win-win to me - less seed waste and no competition for the goldfinches.

So I will be retiring the tube feeder anon.

In the meantime I guess I will add a hanging platform feeder. I will probably try the looker 12x12 feeder with the cover. Allegedly it keeps out larger birds like crows and starlings and grackles but lets cardinals and the like still feed. We'll see. Because the cardinals sure don't like the squirrel buster I have (it is the standard and does not have the cardinal ring).

I am seeing chickadees in some numbers now, and continue to see song sparrows and house finches. Occasionally I see a cardinal but they don't stay long unless there is seed on the ground (hence the thought that I should get a platform feeder).

There is also something that I swear looks like a monster mutant chickadee - the thing is ginormous if it is actually a chickadee. I haven't been quick enough with the binoculars to get a really thoroughly good look at it yet. I suppose it COULD be a house sparrow - but it really doesn't have the kind of scruffy looking markings I would expect, though admittedly until I can get a good long clear look at it with the binoculars I can't swear to that given my generally pretty poor eyesight sans binocs.

I did see some blackbirds fly through the feeder complex today but it didn't appear that they stopped anywhere. It was too fast to tell what sort of blackbirds - starlings, cowbirds, grackles, or some other sort of blackbird. Nowhere big enough to be crows. But it does give me pause, what with wanting to put up a feeder for the cardinals without having it taken over by grackles or something.

Here is a link that might be useful: Looker 12x12 hanging platform (pictured with optional cover)

This post was edited by zensojourner on Thu, Apr 17, 14 at 4:56

zensojourner: That hanging platform should be really popular.

Ginormous chickadee sounds interesting - maybe a Rose-breasted Grosbeak?.

This is how I insert multiple photos:
How do I include a photo in my post? FAQ

Once you have the photos on the web hosting site you just keep copying the html tags and pasting them into the same message.

Claire

OK, that's just coding in native HTML. I know how to do that - I just thought you couldn't do that on this site.

I'm sure it's NOT a rose-breasted grosbeak. But it might have been a house sparrow. Or maybe it really was a ginormous chickadee. I haven't seen it back yet.

I did have a grackle sitting out there eying all the feeders he couldn't get into and cawing harshly. I don't know who was more annoyed, him or me. I'm definitely having second thoughts about a platform feeder of any sort.