If you’re planning to install a bird feeder in your backyard, it is essential that you understand which seed to purchase. Many birds prefer basic seed blends consisting of black-oil sunflower seeds, millet and cracked corn as their staple food source.
Wild birds are efficient eaters, making food quality important. Here are a few tips to help you select the most effective bird seed.
Contents
Sunflower Seeds
Sunflower seeds make an enjoyable and nutritive snack, both raw and roasted. Unsalted roasted sunflower seeds contain high amounts of fiber and protein while providing your body with essential monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats that promote cardiovascular health as well as vitamin E which acts as an antioxidant against cell damage.
Sunflower seed nutrition includes plant sterols that reduce cholesterol. Furthermore, sunflower seeds provide a great source of potassium which is known for helping balance blood pressure. Furthermore, sunflower seeds contain pantothenic acid which plays an integral role in metabolism such as producing fat and regulating hormones.
Sunflower seeds provide essential folate and zinc nutrients, which have been shown to prevent neural tube defects during gestation, such as spina bifida. Furthermore, sunflower seeds contain vitamin B1, which assists with food conversion into energy; vitamin C; selenium can increase energy levels; while one ounce serving of shelled sunflower seeds packs plenty of calories from fat; most likely enough calories are present within one ounce serving of shelled sunflower seeds.
Millet
Millet provides essential nutrition such as protein, fat, calcium and B-complex vitamins to wild birds. It serves as food for finches, buntings, sparrows cardinals and towhees alike and is often featured as part of backyard feeders.
“You get what you pay for” holds true when it comes to bird seed. Bargain mixtures may offer good value for your dollar, but often contain high percentages of sorghum (milo), flaxseed and oats seeds that don’t appeal to many birds that visit Georgia feeders.
Nature’s Window Premium Backyard provides an ideal blend to attract more of the birds that visit your yard, with limited ingredients free from milo, wheat and corn – and is popular among chickadees, cardinals and jays as well as nuthatches, siskins and titmice. In addition, its combination of hulled millet and tree nut pieces provides additional energy boost over other blends.
Peanuts
Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) are an invaluable legume crop used widely in traditional cuisine worldwide. You can enjoy eating raw or cooked in dishes and desserts; peanut butter can also be made using them or they may even be ground down into flour for use as flour replacements.
Peanuts are an excellent source of protein and boast heart-healthy monounsaturated fats while offering balanced levels of polyunsaturates, providing 9 calories per gram of energy (Feldman 1999). Furthermore, peanuts provide dietary fiber and phytochemicals with antioxidant properties like resveratrol which has been linked with reduced cancer risks as well as phytosterols which have been demonstrated to decrease cholesterol supply to prostate tissue.
Peanuts are annual legumes that thrive best in warmer weather. Their growth may either be clustered or running and usually reach 45-60 cm (18-24 in). Peanuts prefer light sandy loam soil with pH 5.9-7 as their ability to fix nitrogen means they need minimal or no additional fertilization, enriching soil by doing so.
Nyjer Seed
Goldfinches will come running to your feeders when fresh nyjer is available and plentiful, eagerly eager to eat its oil-rich seed that draws them like magnets. In addition, the presence of fresh nyjer also brings other birds such as sparrows, chickadees and pine siskins into your yard.
This seed comes from the African yellow daisy (Guizotia abyssinica), not our native thistles or Canada thistle weeds. Some people refer to this seed as “thistle seed,” however WBFI recommends we refer to it by its trademarked name of Nyjer, in order to avoid confusion between our native thistles and Canada thistle plants that could become invasive species.
It is usually imported from Myanmar (Burma), India or Ethiopia and sterilized prior to export by heating to ensure no noxious or invasive plant seeds become mixed in with it. Since nyjer can quickly spoil, make sure your feeders contain fresh seeds – look for bright shine on each individual seed to ensure freshness!
