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peanuts or sunflowers seeds (1 Viewer)

peanuts or sunflower seeds

  • peanuts

    Votes: 88 14.9%
  • sunflower seeds

    Votes: 502 85.2%

  • Total voters
    589
I for sure choose Sunflower over peanuts. Though I do put our peanuts for the Blue Jays. Also I find that Black Oil Sunflower seed better than Striped..Black Oil is smaller and more can go into the feeder...Striped is mostly shell! LOL Cardinals come like crazy to the sunflower!!
 
Sambrose said:
And where is that?? Squirrels can get into ANYthing!

Maybe our squirrels are not as smart as yours! In the left hand picture (in the background) is a pole feeder system and also a bird table, each fitted with a baffle. In 14 years no squirrels have managed to get onto them - though they have been positioned in such a way that there are no nearby trees or shrubs from which they can jump. In the foreground is a pole system installed just over a year ago - squirrels have not (so far) got round the seed tray.

Other feeders that we have are like the right hand picture - squirrels can get onto these, and reach inside (juvenile squirrels can get right inside), but they seem unable to get much food, so don't bother to try after a while.
 

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Thanks, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Bigg said:
Maybe our squirrels are not as smart as yours! In the left hand picture (in the background) is a pole feeder system and also a bird table, each fitted with a baffle. In 14 years no squirrels have managed to get onto them - though they have been positioned in such a way that there are no nearby trees or shrubs from which they can jump. In the foreground is a pole system installed just over a year ago - squirrels have not (so far) got round the seed tray.

Other feeders that we have are like the right hand picture - squirrels can get onto these, and reach inside (juvenile squirrels can get right inside), but they seem unable to get much food, so don't bother to try after a while.

NICE feeding stations; thanks for the pointers...guess I just haven't tried hard enough!
 
The Black Sunflower certainly brought in the Finch Family. Nuts do well too Crushing the nuts (although it wears me out) goes down like magic.
Ann Chaplin ,e-mailed me to buy a cheap blender and I certainly will.
The same with the fat balls - I have to crumble them up and they go quickly but hung out whole - This cold weather -too much hard work for the birds in my garden. o:)
 
Mary Evelyn said:
The Black Sunflower certainly brought in the Finch Family. Nuts do well too Crushing the nuts (although it wears me out) goes down like magic.
Ann Chaplin ,e-mailed me to buy a cheap blender and I certainly will.
The same with the fat balls - I have to crumble them up and they go quickly but hung out whole - This cold weather -too much hard work for the birds in my garden. o:)



Try crushing your peanuts in an old sock with a hammer or other heavey object, until you get your blender. That way the nuts dont fly all over the place as you whack them..
 
littlestintboy said:
Try crushing your peanuts in an old sock with a hammer or other heavey object, until you get your blender. That way the nuts dont fly all over the place as you whack them..
Today, I placed them in a heavy plastic bag and walked all over them with my 3 inch platforms ha ha o:) Worked a treat.All ready for in the morn. :clap:
Thankyou for the tip though. o:)
 
The Peanuts!! There are 2 pair of Blue Jays that take every peanut(in shell) within an hour. They carry them off one by one. A titmouse will take one every now and then.
Overall, with all birds included it would be the black oil sunflower.

jneville
 
Peanuts,
at my place of work, we've just put up 10 feeders 5 peanut and 5 seed. theres alot more activity on the peanuts and more variety on them. but they have only been up a couple of days, so it will be interesting to see which the birds choose
 
I have been making large fat trays of melted dripping with sultanas and chopped nuts.I then cut up into small pieces,which I put into the tray along with the bird seed,bread and sultanas.The latter are definitely the most popular.
 
christineredgate said:
I have been making large fat trays of melted dripping with sultanas and chopped nuts.I then cut up into small pieces,which I put into the tray along with the bird seed,bread and sultanas.The latter are definitely the most popular.

And so tasty too.

I totaly agree and chopped nuts work better for me everytime.If I put the nuts out whole in the feeders they slow down but chopped they go like magic.
I am now in the habit of chopping them all the time to ensure nothing chokes come spring.
 
I'm in the 90% sunflowers/10% peanuts category. But whenever I've put peanuts in the seed feeders they dissappear quickly. Perhaps it's mainly a matter of whichever is easiest to pick up - the mesh peanut feeders are too much like hard work.
 
Its sunflower hearts and nothing else in my garden. Peanuts just go rock hard and black because the birds never touch them. Fat balls, suet cakes etc are never touched and I also end up throwing them away. I know that this has something to do with location, as my neighbour has a peanut feeder less than 10 yds away from my feeders and it always has a greenfinch, or a member of the tit family on it. This was also the case when he put out a suet cake in a very similar location.
 
We put out five feeders - black oil sunflower, niger, peanuts (in metal cage with holes) suet (peanut butter) and a platform for peanuts. The Blue Jays eat from the platform - taking huge mouthfuls - 7 nuts at a time! while we get chickadees, white and red breasted nuthatches, hairy and downy woodpeckers, purple and gold finches at everything else - the black squirrels are definitely nuisance -so the feeders are hung from a very fine steel wire strung between 2 trees that I frequently coat with olive oil!
I fill all feeders,with the exception of the suet, every weekend.
 
bristolbirder said:
My peanut feeder is largely ignored by my garden birds, preferring the seed feeder and the spillage underneath. At the moment I have plenty of Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Bullfinch and Goldfinch along with Robin, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Magpie.

Do most people find that, given the choice, most birds prefer seeds (especially black sunflower) to peanuts?


Yes i Do too. Infact they ignore the Niger and Peanut and just go for the General Mix.The sunflower gets hit on but not as much as the general stuff.

I have now ground the peanut up and put it in a perspex box with a 1 inch hole just to see whether the tits and robins and wrens will have a go.
 
My Greenfinches seem to prefer the peanuts whhile the sparrows seem to prefer the sunflower seeds.
If I put out general mix I get more birds like Doves and dozens of Starlings but they just seems to throws the seed about the place and pick what they want. It makes a huge mess !
 
I can't really choose at the moment because I grind the peanuts in Summer and they go down well.I also find the Blacksunflower is popular too.I don't use whole peanuts at all in the breeding season but weight for weight there is nothing in it here. :bounce:
 
:flyaway: I have mixed seeds in two feeders and peanuts in another. So far the mixed is going quicker, but I think because the birds don't really like the millet seed which dominates the mixed feeders. Today I bought black-oil sunflower seeds and mixed it with the rest. Sunflower seeds are most popular this time of year I think. I can't forget my suet feeder, it's popular also. Happy birding! :flyaway:
 
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