A variety of seed-eating birds will visit any feeder stocked with shelled sunflower seeds, such as this Hairy Woodpecker, Redpoll, and Black-capped Chickadee (photos by Paul Konrad).
As finch season approaches, small birds such as these Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches will prefer shelled sunflower seeds over other foods.
When we look back on when we started feeding birds, like many birders we bought a plastic bag of mixed seeds that included a lot of millet, red milo, and cracked corn at the hardware store. But that was before the true advent of feeding wild birds. Today, birders in the know ignore these seed mixes and, realistically, buying bird food today is much easier. We know that by simply providing black oil sunflower seeds we will attract 95 percent of the seed-eating birds we all prefer to see in our yard, and by providing fresh water we will potentially attract and benefit all birds.
Black oil sunflower seeds provide the best quality of food for wild birds because they are small enough for even goldfinches, chickadees, siskins, and nuthatches to eat, but larger birds like cardinals, woodpeckers, and jays relish them – and these seeds provide highest level of food value of any seeds.
Today, we take providing sunflower seeds a step farther by providing shelled sunflower kernels, which eliminates the mess of empty shells that are spread around the ground and pile up below feeders. It also eliminates the toil of raking, shoveling, and bagging sunflower shells that accumulate around your feeding station. And let’s be honest, there are shells discarded here and there around your yard and neighboring yards too. The shells create a mess – so don’t buy them. Read more
