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Post by alf1951 on Jun 22, 2015 6:08:15 GMT
I buy commercial "wild bird seed" for the feeders containing wheat, split maize, millet, sunflower seed, red dari, and rapeseed oil. Most of it ends up on the ground where, thankfully, the wood pigeons and collared doves hoover most of it up. House sparrows and robins appear to eat most of what they pick out but the tits (blue, coal and great tits) throw seed everywhere and are clearly very selective about what they eat. I don't use a bird table because the jackdaws and rooks simply take over. Is there a seed mix other members recommend?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 23, 2015 12:01:31 GMT
I use Sunflower Hearts which seem to go very fast...the Coal tits however seem like pernickety little buggers as they will drop a few before they get the 'right one' which they usually cache in cracks on the fence.
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Post by rowanberry on Jun 23, 2015 20:47:41 GMT
I buy separate grains from Brinvale, (one of the few suppliers that seems to sell them individually) and then I mix my own. Red and white millet, kibbled oats and naked cleaned oats, and hulled sunflower seeds...all this goes in a tube feeder inside a caged feeder, with a mesh tray below the tube feeder. The sparrows tend to rake everything out into the tray, but then throughout the day they pick through it and usually clean it all up by the next morning. They have black sunflower seeds in the shell in another feeder. I stopped getting anything with wheat or cracked corn in it- only the pigeons will eat it, and they were starting to become a bit of a problem. I find that one reason food ends up on the ground is that the trays beneath feeders simply aren't big enough- the least bit of wind, or the first time a starling lands on the feeder and tilts it, then it empties out everywhere. I got tired of filling the black sunflower feeder every day, (it's in the shape of one of those lantern-style feeders) and I got a cheap enamel 'camping' frying pan from PoundLand, drove a hole through it so I could attach it to the underside of the feeder and now the seed never ends up being spilled. It's saved me a fortune in birdseed.
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Post by alf1951 on Jun 24, 2015 6:10:18 GMT
Sounds like excellent advice Rowan - think I'll try all that. Thanks
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