REGION — People have been feeding birds for centuries. In the agrarian world of the 1800s, food offered to birds was usually just harvest waste from growing fields, such as leftover corn. When someone finally started to pay attention to what those birds were actually eating, dealers began to sell seed mixes for caged birds and show pigeons.
But for decades, birdseed still contained waste, including milo, wheat, hulled oats and rice.
To this day, the one that still wins out over all others is black oil sunflower seed. It fits easily into just about any kind of feeder except tiny thistle feeders (save that for spring goldfinches.)
The birds we most see in winter are bluejays, nuthatches, titmice, mourning doves, woodpeckers, juncos, song sparrows, house finches, Carolina wrens, cardinals, purple finches, some pine siskins and redpolls and, of course, our beloved chickadees.
Read carefully all information on the package, which should provide a breakdown of its contents, and might even include endorsements from organizations such as Cornell or Audubon..
Should you happen to get a container with a lot of chaff—stuff apart from actual seed—perhaps even small worms in the seed, you should return it. Those are likely grain larvae and indicate that the product may have been stored for too long in a hot place. The chaff could soon become moths. The chickadees might like the extra protein, but could also throw it out of the feeder.
The type of pole or other support you might choose to hang your feeder on is important if you have stray cats around. Keep the feeder several feet away from bushes; this helps ground feeders. Install squirrel baffles on the pole above or below the feeder if hanging from a tree, which also discourages cats.
Some feeders come with built-in suet feeders. Yes, suet! We haven’t found a bird yet that doesn’t go for suet! Believe it or not, even at the current high price of beef, you can still ask your butcher for suet and it’s pretty cheap, or go for a commercially available suet cake as long as it doesn’t include the seed you are already feeding.
Here’s one way you don’t want to feed your birds: to cats! We have indoor and outdoor cats, and we’ve learned through research that birds are tetrachromats, a fourth color sensor for red, green, blue and patterns; this enables them to see color. We love both our cats and our birds, so our cats now have the “birds be safe collars”; see photo at riverreporter.com. They really work!
So get those feeders out there. You might see our Sullivan County Audubon group counting your birds on December 30 if you are in the Audubon Counting Circle.