There’s no substitute for good quality, super-clean bird food in my wildlife garden; however, bird feeders can be interchangeable depending on the bird diet I’m providing.
There’s no doubt in my mind that a good quality bird feeder is worth the extra investment largely because they’re generally safer for birds, easier to clean, and are robust enough to survive a sustained squirrel attack. My question for this week’s diary is, when it comes to feeding sunflower hearts, which feeder do birds prefer? The specially designed sunflower heart feeder or, a standard tube-type seed feeder?
Here’s my video diary:
It’s a longer recording from me than usual, but I wanted to supply plenty of evidence to support the fact that (in my garden) birds appear to prefer the sunflower heart feeder. They seem happy enough to feed on both; however, the sunflower feeder seems to encourage more natural behaviour at the feeding station and allows birds to approach from numerous angles, and I think that makes the engagement safer for them. The birds seem to find the mesh very easy to manoeuvre upon and it was the clear winner in my garden. (There could be other reasons for this which are more complicated and I’ll be exploring these in another video soon).
If I were feeding a mix, such as the new One for All no-mess mix, i’d switch back to the tube-type seed feeder as the mix falls through the sunflower heart feeder.
I hope you find this video useful.
Until next week, enjoy all that nature has to offer.
Simon
Ps. Both bird feeders can be found here.
https://haiths.com/collections/bird-seed-feeders
Written by Simon H. King
