Kae Audhild wrote a review of a very attractive birdfeeder this morning and I didn’t want to fill up her Comments with my thoughts on the subject. So, here we are.

There was a fairly short period in Vash’s life when he liked to wander at night. I started leaving a dish of kibble out for him on a table by the kitchen window. He eventually decided that inside with snuggles was better than whatever he’d been getting up to. He was neutered. So, it wasn’t that.

Because of the kibble dish, we got to see a possum up close. And, one snowy day, a pair of cardinals were glad to find a snack. That inspired us to get a feeder.

Unfortunately, we have particularly greedy squirrels living in our back trees and they could clean out a feeder in half a day, leaving nothing for the birds. I was bitching about it and someone told that there are such things as effective squirrel proof feeders. I investigated and found that Squirrel Busters are highly rated.

They aren’t cheap. But, they hold up well and they really do work. The springs in ours have lasted for over a decade and are still going strong. Bonus has been watching them frustrate fat squirrels.

We have 2 small feeders on the front stoop and a larger one off the back patio. Chuck tried a different brand in the front, briefly. But a bear mangled it. It still works. But it isn’t as springy as the other 3. So, it has become our reserve bird feeder for times of particularly bad weather. Like now when we have 4 inches of snow on the ground.

We started with all-purpose bird seed that had sunflower seeds, thistles and millet. There was probably other stuff, too. But, it’s been a while I don’t remember what all was in it. It looked like the birds that came, in the early days, threw out the millet to get to the good stuff. They may have eaten some. But it didn’t look like it. They absolutely flung it out. And then it sprouted in the flower bed underneath it.

So, we switched to millet-free, which means all of one thing because all bird seed mixtures seem to have millet in them. And frankly, I think of it as filler.

In our area, if you are going to get single seeds, your choices are thistles, safflower or sunflower. Thistles are only attractive to a limited variety of birds and, while we like those birds, they bypassed the thistles when the other option that we used for the rest of the crowd was available. So, no thistles. Also, the woodpeckers have preferred seeds to meal worm blocks. So, we stopped bothering with that, too.

We tried safflower seeds and they are messy. There’s a kind of papery skin on the seeds that got left all over the place. They’re cheaper than sunflower seeds. But, not enough cheaper to be worth the constant clean up.

Obviously unshelled sunflower seeds cost less. But, you’re getting less actual food. So, of course they do. AND they sprout. If feral sunflowers make you happy, they’re great. If you don’t want random sunflowers popping up around your yard, they can be annoying. (Chuck mowed around ours and it was pretty, but not our intention.)

Sunflower hearts and/or chips don’t sprout. Everybody loves them. They don’t leave a mess on the stoop or patio. What gets dribbled by slovenly finches gets cleaned up by doves and juncoes. And I can get big bags at the farm store for slightly less than $2/lb., which means I don’t have to go shopping for seeds very often.

As with all things, YMMV. You may not have greedy squirrels that don’t share with other creatures. Your woodpeckers may really like meal worms better than sunflower seeds. You may have enough wind to blow safflower skins off your porch or your feeders may be conveniently hung where it doesn’t matter. This is what works for us.