To attract the type of birds you want at your bird feeder, you will need to know what type of wild bird seed each species prefers. For example, black oil sunflower seeds will attract a variety of songbirds, including chickadees, finches, cardinals and grosbeaks, woodpeckers, and buntings, but will not necessarily attract orioles, tanagers, and doves. Orioles and tanagers like suet and fruit, even nectar, while pigeons and other ground-feeding birds prefer corn, millet, and milo. Woodpeckers, on the other hand, prefer suet.
You not only need to get the right type of bird seed, but good quality seed as well. It is best to get your seed from a high quality distributor. Those mixed bags of bird seed you find in “Big Box” stores have often been sitting in a warehouse for a long time and are far from fresh. Those bird seed mixes also have a lot of filler type seeds, like milo and wheat, which birds don’t particularly like and have low nutritional value. When offering such mixes you will often find that birds will kick all the filler seed out of the way to get to any of the better quality seed that is left. Worse yet, the milo can attract undesirable species such as thrushes, grackles, and starlings, as well as uninvited squirrels and even rats.
Although these types of mixed bird seed bags are cheaper, you really end up spending the same, if not more, than you would on higher quality mixes. Maybe half or even more ends up on your deck, porch or in your garden, making a mess and going to waste. Sometimes you even have to fight the weed seed that starts to sprout in your lawn. So try to get your bird seed from a local bird store or an easier way is from an online bird seed store.
Many people will buy sunflower seeds, but don’t realize that not all sunflower seeds are created equal. There are black oil sunflower and striped sunflower seeds. Go for the black oil. Yes, they cost a little more than the striped ones, but black oil sunflower seeds have twice the calories per pound of the striped ones. In addition, their smaller size and thinner shells are easier for a wider variety of birds to crack than the thicker, harder-shelled striped seeds that can only be eaten by birds with large seed-cracking beaks. If you love your birds, you will give them black oil. Enough talk.
Now, if you don’t want to serve just sunflower seeds, you can make your own wild bird food mix. Try mixing shelled sunflower seeds, white millet, cracked corn, red millet, peanut pieces, and shelled millet to attract a variety of species such as doves, goldfinches, white-throated sparrows, house finches, indigo buntings, juncos, purple finches , quail, towhees, white-crowned sparrows and other species. If you don’t want to make your own, try getting a mix that is labeled “No Waste.” These mixes have no filler seeds and are typically all shelled, so there’s virtually no waste and less mess, with no shells building up under the feeder.