The Best Seed To Add To Your Bird Feeder To Attract A Wider Variety

If you wanted to attract the greatest variety of people to an event, you'd serve something that just about everyone likes, maybe pizza or barbecue. The same principle applies when you want to entice a wide variety of birds to your feeder. Give 'em what they love — which means you should avoid the common mixed bird seed you find in stores. Instead, the pizza of the bird world is sunflower seeds, the most popular option among many bird species. At least 40 species are known to choose sunflower seeds as their favorite, so a deficiency of sunflower seeds in your feeder could be why your bird seed isn't attracting birds, let alone a significant variety of avian visitors.

While store-bought mixes may contain sunflowers, they also typically contain filler seeds like wheat, millet, sorghum (also known as milo), oats, and flaxseed that are unpopular with birds and often go to waste. Instead, birds will gravitate to the fat, protein, fiber, and vitamins that sunflower seeds supply. As a fat, the oil in sunflower seeds gives birds the energy they need to thrive.

Sunflower seeds come in several varieties, including black oil, striped, and gray. Because of their small size and thin hull that's relatively easy to crack, most birds choose nutrient-dense black oil seeds, which also have the most oil of the three. In fact, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources recommends that 75% of the seeds in your feeder should be black oil sunflower seeds. With sunflower seeds, you can attract everything from northern cardinals to goldfinches, woodpeckers, and dark-eyed juncos. 

Some smaller birds might struggle to crack into large sunflower seed shells. You can make it easier for them by providing hulled sunflower seeds or sunflower seed chips. Be aware that without their hulls, hulled sunflower seeds don't stay fresh as long as they would with their shells. Consider supplying only a small quantity of hulled seeds, especially because they are more expensive than sunflower seeds with hulls.

Squirrels inevitably enter the bird seed conversation, especially when we're talking about sunflower seeds, which squirrels love as much as birds do. You'll want to read up on how to keep squirrels out of your bird feeder. Clean hulls from under your feeder, along with bits of remaining sunflower meat that can spoil easily and affect bird health. Cleaning up helps your garden too, since the hulls also produce a chemical that keeps plants from growing.