I finally got around to putting out the white millet...hense the chipping sparrows feeding this morning. We always have them in winter as long as I feed white millet.
Johanna
Do you notice any other birds except sparrows that prefer white millet? Red millet is a waste around here. Nothing eats it.
Very nice pic Flicker! I know the doves eat it too.
My finches eat (but don't prefer) the red and white millet, but not the milo.
http://www.southernstates.com/articles/lg/wildbirdsrateseeds.jsp
Thanks, MrsEd for the chart of birdseed. I had forgotten all about it. I have used woodpecker mix + chipped sunflower + white millet for several winters. Like everything else, birdfeeding id getting expensive. We do get mourning doves, occassonal Inca doves, and sometimes cowbirds for the millet too. I have a special suet that I make for winter loved by bluebirds as well as many other kinds of birds.
English sparrows have become scarce away from town. Last winter our usual white throated sparrows were gone but I am seeing a few this year. Once there were many brown headed nuthatches but no more.
Much of our lovely woods are being clear cut for what is commercial and residential concrete and buildings. So sad. I am glad that I will not be around to see the next 50 yrs!
Johanna
I had done a little testing here with the grey striped sunflower seed and nobody other than the squirrles here will eat those. Of course they are cheap....figures! lol
Repeating white millet good...milo bad...white millet good...milo bad...
Also
Red millet good, Milo Bad, Red millet good, Milo bad. Unless you are feeding pheasants and quail.
Milo looks like red millet only is bigger.
Here's a fun page: http://www.jjcardinal.com/seed.htm
This message was edited Dec 10, 2008 9:03 AM
I see the Junco's are eating the hulled white millet.
Maybe if the birdfood companies would identify which kind of milo there mix contained it would help. Any that started with BR would be a waste. Bird resistant milos were breed to keep the birds from eating the crop in the field. Before the 1960s farmers had problems with birds eating their crops of milo. Many started using the new bird resistant ones. When I was a boy I remember seeing birds on the milo seed heads. Some of the birds I saw then I do not see as much now. I guess they had less to eat so there population dwindled. I wonder if any old types of milo are planted now?
interesting frank. I just put out new seeds and oddly, all of the milo (and sunflower) has been eaten. The culprits in the milo are the doves, I'm sure. I usually don't feed the millet/sunflower/milo mix, but I've had so many darned house sparrows this year that I thought I'd put some out and leve the sunflowers to the house finches and cardinals.
I am considering switching out the safflower to one of the cheap mixes because of the House Sparrows. Safflower is too expensive to feed all of them.
I was hoping to find straight millet. No luck yet.
ah, there you go. I had not resorted to online yet. Which is silly, really, since I have to do so much of my shopping online.
