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Feeding wild birds isn’t just a question of chucking a few bits of bread on the lawn and leaving it at that.  It is far more complex and not a responsibility that should be taken lightly.

Anyone who is determined to feed wild birds will need to buy huge amounts of bird food every winter as well as a book about birds and some binoculars to be able to study and identify the different wild bird species.

Every couple of days, the bird food container will need to be filled again, which if calculated over the space of a year, amounts to a considerably expensive investment.   A commitment such as that usually comes with the expectation of attracting unusual and attractive wild bird species.

Bird Food Choices

There are many varieties of bird feed on the market and these can easily be bought in single bird feed types or mixes at the local supermarket, garden supply store or livestock supply store.

You may be surprised to know that the mixture of bird food one uses greatly influences the variety and quantity of birds that will come to feed, so if you want to attract a certain species, you will need to research carefully what their favourite food mixture is.

In a study of more than seven hundred thousand observations conducted in California, Maryland, Maine and Ohio, carried out under the supervision of the Wildlife Urban Research Program of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, striped black sunflower seeds and white millet were the standards used.  The rest of the feeds were provided at experimental tables together with one or two of  the standards in order to gauge the feeds’ attractiveness.

Many birds are actually not too fussy and will eat a variety of foods but even some of these showed a marked preference for a particular type of food.

If you offer foods that are known to entice the particular wild birds that you would like to see, attracting them should not be too difficult and will also deter those birds you do not wish to encourage, such as starlings for example.

Those birds which eat seeds are usually attracted to sunflower seeds and of these, the one found to be most attractive to wild birds is the black-oil type.

The types of birds likely to be attracted by white millet are small ones, such as sparrows and peanuts (shelled) are most attractive to starlings.

The bird feeds that are quite unappealing to wild bird species are canary, rape and flax.
If you want to discourage the Brown Headed Cowbird, that most notorious of breeding parasites  or house sparrows, safflower seed is the feed you should use.

Feeding wild birds may not be as easy as you first thought, but some effort in researching which breed prefers to eat what and, indeed, which won’t eat certain foods, should ensure that you attract the birds you want and discourage those that you don’t.

Liz Canham is webmistress of Worldwide Bird Watching.

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