Thinking About A Change

[Axeman]

I am curious what people prefer to use in their feeders.

I have realized that my preferred mix, while it contains higher percentages of sunflower, niger and peanut, still has a lot of milo and millet which...well doesn't really get eaten....I was considering going to just sunflower and niger.....

Thoughts?

[Dr. John]

For years we have just used black sunflower seeds in our main feeder and then niger in a finch feeder.  It seems to work well for most species, while discouraging pigeons for the most part. If blue jays are around, we will also put out peanuts.  We sometimes put out suet in the winters.

[Axeman]

oh don't the jays eat the sunflower seeds too? We get a lot of blue jays and a few cardinals at the feeders....I figured the jays were going for the sunflower seeds....there just aren't enough peanuts for the volume of Jays we get..

[Dr. John]

The jays will eat the sunflower seeds, but are far more attracted by the peanuts.  If we just have sunflower seeds out, the jays don't visit regularly.  If they visit and get peanuts, they come back looking for more (sometimes quite insistently).