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How do i steal my neghbors gold finches....errr (1 Viewer)

B

BlueJaybob

Well-known member
I have been competing for song birds for a while now with my neghbor. I get all the sparrows,house finches,grackles,buntings and jays but the one thing i dont have is goldfinches. I put up a thisle feeder and it is just used by house finches. I also planted a catmint and they havent even looked at that. What else can i do to make a haven for goldfinches.


sincerly
stuck in the feeder
 
Next door to me get get different birds to me but I intentionally put out different feed as I can view both feeding areas form my window. Have you tried nyjer seed
 
My neighbour feeds pigeons I don't mind cus I get plenty of them in my garden anyway and I enjoy watching them on my wall he feeds Crows aswell
 
WATER!!!

Bubbling, fresh water. Fewer people water the birds than feed them. The goldfinches will mob your bath as soon as they find it.
 
Put a shepherd's hook and two thistle tube feeders away from the other feeders, so that the larger birds don't scare them away. Plant yellow flowers, and make sure you also have things like coneflower-let the dead heads stay for the winter, so they can eat at them. Provide water with a drip, which they just love. Keep the tube feeders extra clean. Good luck!
 
Sunflower plants for goldfinch

Lady19thC said:
Put a shepherd's hook and two thistle tube feeders away from the other feeders, so that the larger birds don't scare them away. Plant yellow flowers, and make sure you also have things like coneflower-let the dead heads stay for the winter, so they can eat at them. Provide water with a drip, which they just love. Keep the tube feeders extra clean. Good luck!
Click to expand...
We planted medium sized sunflowers a few years ago on a ninth floor balcony,The day the blooms opened the goldfinches came and perched on them.By the end of the next day the heads were picked clean.I made sure to keep a supply of sunflower seeds out for them to keep them coming.At my new house on ground level the goldies are happy with their thistle feeder and will rip apart the sunflowers we grow that the chipmunks don't get to.
Sam
 

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BlueJaybob said:
I have all these stuff you meansoed.
Click to expand...

Maybe it is the quantity of thistle feeders compared to the other feeders that the House Finches might eat from. I notice in my yard that House Finches on a feeder intimidate goldfinches.

I get House Finches and Lesser Goldfinches. In the past, the house finches typically ate out of the mesh Magnum feeder that had black oil sunflower seeds. The Lesser Goldfinches typically ate from the two sock feeders with thistle. However, I haven't refilled the black oil sunflower feeder for about the past week because I have been meaning to clean it. As a result, the house finches have taken over the thistle socks. I put up two more socks so the goldfinches could eat too. They still don't get as much feeder time as they used to. Tonight I will clean the sunflower feeder and get it refilled. We will see what the result is. I'm guessing the House Finches will move back to it for the most part.

Hope this story helps your situation.
 
The bad :storm: has brought the goldfinches out so I put out two more thisle feeders and that very night I had a whole flock of them. But my neghbor has more. any more info.
 
A whole flock, that's great! Well I don't know how to get more birds in your yard than your neighbor's.

As far as the competition for thistle/nyjer seed in my yard...the house finches are still eating a lot of it. I bought another feeder that is large metal mesh with a lid and tray. It is called a Magnum. All my other feeders have been socks. The birds aren't to keen on the new feeder. It has been up about two weeks and the seed level has bearly gone down. However, I have to refill the socks every other day.
 
How do i steal my neighbors gold finches?

LIVE Niger seed! Bought some about 2 months ago at www.nyger.com and have been doing great. Can't wait to get up in the morning and watch the finches come in for breakfast. I used to only see a few Goldfinches now and then. But within a couple of weeks one Goldfinch became a regular and now I have 8 every morning! And they seem to stick around most of the day. How big can the Goldfinch flocks get?

Sorry for posting to this old thread, but didn't realize there were two kinds of niger seed here in the states and thought others would want to know. Turns out the imported niger is heat treated to kill it! I've been telling everyone about live niger since I found it, except my neighbors |:D|

Plus I like the idea that it is grown in America :t:
 
Congratulations, Shoresroad!
Getting a regular flock of Goldfinches is a real endorsement for your setup. Do you have water or just the seed feeders?
Incidentally, there was a posting on this site a couple of years ago from a bird lover who had masses of Goldfinches at his many feeders, hundreds each day. So if they find a good place, they will come.
 
Ok Mike, thanks for the tip about red |=)|

Hi Etudiant,

I've got a bird bath near the tree with the niger feeders. I also saw a tip on another thread here that said they like rock salt - didn't know that.

So that is the next thing on my list to add to my setup. We get quite a bit of rain, so trying to figure out how to offer it without a muck mess in a bowl...maybe another seed feeder, only with rock salt in it? Or maybe I should just throw some on the ground under the niger feeders once or twice a week?

I joined Bird Forum to learn more about Goldfinches now that I've got them, so any tips would be appreciated |=)|

Thanks!
 
Gonna tell you that the Goldfinches in my yard are completely ignoring the thistle feeders but are draining my sunflower heart seed feeders.
 
Hi KC,

Most of the finches ignored my thistle feeders too! They would nibble a bit, but I would usually just have to throw the thistle seed out after a while as it would just sit there. A Goldfinch would come by once in a while, but then just move on.

You might want to try the live niger. My finches act like it is a totally different type of seed and love it |=)|

Do you offer rock salt? I'd never heard of that.

Thanks!
 
Not to be a wet blanket on the "live niger seed" argument, but it's still a non-native (to North America) invasive that will sprout and will create mats of rooted plants that will mold if not kept picked up all the time. Also, I'm a little leery of any commercial site that emphatically claims that "live niger" is not a thistle or a weed and says that the only reason niger was originally irradiated was to prevent other known noxious seeds mixed in with the niger from sprouting. My understanding is that it IS a type of thistle but don't recall where I've read that info (but will look).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for birds eating "natural" (raw) seeds since they don't naturally have little teeny ovens to roast any seed/nut before consuming to get rid of mold. ;) But I'm even more concerned with non-native plant seeds being imported and then altered (which is all that Nyger.com does for their "US developed" seed and the basis for their patent) for use by native bird species.

I've also had similar experience KC has had: Lesser and American Goldfinches, given the choice between my niger feeder and one where I had only sunflower heart chips, ate sunflower hearts on a 10-to-1 ratio to the niger. This was in mixed conifer/juniper forest at 7,000 ft. in north-central Arizona. YMMV. :t:
 
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No expert, but would think that grit might well be popular with the Goldfinches, as they need it for their gizzard to work properly. Wonder if that was why they accepted rock salt.
Certainly road grit with some salt mixed in is very widely used in winter and may have this surprising side benefit. It would kill the vegetation where it falls however, so maybe just on a platform feeder with a mesh floor and a roof to minimize the moisture impact.
 
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