How to Buy Wild Bird Food

Birding is a great hobby for young and old alike. You often don't have to look any further than your own back yard, though venturing out to explore other habitats can be a fun family activity. Knowing the right type and quantity of wild bird food to buy is important when trying to attract large numbers of birds to your backyard aviary. If you're not careful, you may just end up feeding squirrels.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Start by purchasing your seed at a bird feeding store or mill if you can find one. You may pay a little more for it, but you'll be getting much higher quality food. These specialty shops have already eliminated the low quality seeds in the blend, making it a much better value for the money.
2. Avoid grocery store blends that contain milo seeds or have inedible hulls or twigs. Wild birds don't eat the milo and when paying by the pound, you're wasting money on the added debris.
3. Check the seed over for holes in the shells. Holes can be an indication of insects and if you store the seed in your home you could be inviting pests.
4. Limit the amount of seed you purchase to what you'll go through in a couple of weeks. You're not really saving money on that 25-pound bag if it takes you several months to use it. Wild birds don't care for stale food, but more importantly, sunflower oilers can get rancid and pose a health risk to our feathered friends.
5. Make sure your feeders are suitable for the type of seed you buy. For example, you can't fill a finch feeder with a mix of sunflower seeds and peanut hearts as the holes are too small for the birds to get the seeds through.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep your seed stored in a sealed container in a cool dry place. A tight seal will keep moisture out as well as mice and other critters that will make a mess of it in no time.