Your local Wild Birds Unlimited store carries an expansive selection of high quality bird food and feeders, and will answer your inquiries as accurately as possible to assist in selecting products best suited for your yard.
Most discount bird seed appears attractive on its surface but contains cereal grains birds won’t consume (milo, wheat, barley or red milo etc) that end up falling to the ground, attracting mice and spreading disease.
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Feeders
An efficient bird feeder can make or break backyard bird feeding. There are several DIY projects available from simple to artistic that you can build using inexpensive materials found at local hardware stores.
Tray feeders are an ideal way to watch birds as they feed. Furthermore, this style of feeder prevents squirrels and other rodents from raiding its contents.
Pick seed blends without fillers like corn, milo and wheat which contain carbohydrates but little protein or fats; such seeds often end up as piles under your feeders attracting rodents and creating potential disease problems for wild birds. WBU seed blends never include such fillers. Clean and sanitize all bird feeders, baths and hardware on a regular basis before discarding any spoiled or moldy seeds and refraining from handling sick birds to limit avian diseases’ spread.
Blends
As opposed to humans who can store fat reserves for times of scarcity, birds require large quantities of energy each day in the form of bird seed to meet their energy requirements – hence why they come back regularly to visit their feeder and get what they need immediately and quickly.
Therefore, it is crucial that a high-quality blend containing both black oil sunflower seeds and striped sunflower seeds as well as hulled white millet and shelled peanuts be chosen to maximize appeal to birds of various species; including ground feeders such as chickadees, nuthatches and titmice. Such an offering will bring in many birds from ground feeding species as well as those feeding at higher elevations like chickadees, nuthatches and titmice.
If you want to attract woodpeckers and other nuts-eating species, try our Tree Nutty Plus blend which contains a higher proportion of peanuts for these birds. It also contains safflower for house finches – offer this in finch feeders but add extra energy boost by including it in other feeder types like hopper, platform or tube feeders for these popular birds!
Sunflower
Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an annual herb, grown as an oil crop in North America and Argentina as well as for its seeds and ornamental purposes. Additionally, sunflower is frequently utilized as livestock fodder and feedstock in biodiesel production processes.
Each sunflower head consists of up to two thousand tiny flowers called florets. Some ray florets on its edges don’t produce seeds, while the disk florets in its core do.
These seeds provide energy-rich fuel for many bird species. When mixed with striped sunflower and white proso millet seeds, wild birds can enjoy endless seed blends!
Sunflower plants are known for being “hyperaccumulators”, drawing metals like lead out of the soil to help replenish it with essential minerals like iron and zinc. As such, these flowers were among the first crops domesticated by early humans after nuclear accidents occurred – perhaps this explains their widespread adoption as domestic crops today.
Suet
Suet is rendered beef fat from red meat animals such as pigs or other red meat sources that provides essential energy to winter birds and is an enjoyable way to add variety to backyard bird feeding stations. Suet can be mixed with seeds, nuts and dried insects to provide extra nutrition to species less likely to find these items naturally in nature.
Suet can typically be found in rectangular wire cages designed to hang from tree branches or poles, in logs with predrilled holes suspended from a perch, or as “suet socks” or nuggets placed into special feeders. Shredded or chopped suet may also be spread on tree trunks and branches or pine cones for distribution.
Vegetable oils have low melting points and should not be used when creating suet cakes, as this would result in them quickly melting into an unusable state. Wheat, corn or oatmeal may be added as filler materials to help the suet maintain its shape even during hotter weather.
