I'm still working on finding the best food for my backyard children - finches, sparrows and doves - and recently, some friends of mine who have lots of successful bird feeders told me they swear by Nyjer seed. After the gym this morning, I took the 30-minute drive out to Tractor Supply and bought a bag of it.
Filled with excitement, I filled the birdfeeder, expecting the birds to eat their fill. They landed on it, took one look, and flew away.
Argh.
Thug life finch says, "No." |
I'll give it a bit more time to see what happens. I filled the adjacent feeder with black oil sunflower seeds. Maybe they'll like that.
3 comments:
Yes, the nyger is for the tiny birds like sparrows, siskins, red polls, and the like. The sunflower seeds should be much more interesting to bigger birds like finches.
Tim, our finches are actually smaller than our sparrows. You'd think they'd both want to eat it, but no, they hate it. Wretched little brutes! What they need is a cat or two.
I guess you've got a pretty different collection of birds out there. A lot of our sparrows are dinky things that are only about twice the size of the hummingbirds, while the finches are comparatively chunky and about the diameter of a baseball.
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