Bird seed, explained by what is actually in the bag

Seed is where beginners lose the most money, and they lose it invisibly. A cheap twenty pound bag looks like a bargain until you realize a third of it is milo that no bird in your yard will touch. You did not save money; you bought less seed in a bigger bag and then swept the difference off the patio.

The short version

• Black oil sunflower is the default. Widest appeal, best value, one ingredient. Start here. See our seed picks.
• Safflower is the cardinal-friendly seed most squirrels leave alone — with an honest caveat, covered in safflower and squirrels.
• Nyjer is only for finches, and only in a narrow-port finch feeder.
• Suet is winter fuel and the fastest way to bring in woodpeckers. See suet and suet cakes.
• Mealworms feed the insect-eaters that ignore seed entirely, like bluebirds and wrens.

The fillers, named

Project FeederWatch is direct about milo: it is “not a favorite of most birds, and the seed often goes to waste,” and in the east it is best to avoid mixes with large amounts of it. Red millet and cracked corn are the other two ingredients that pad a cheap mix. None of them is poison. They are simply not what most feeder birds want, and every pound of them is a pound you paid for and then raked up.

Turn the bag over. If milo, red millet or cracked corn is in the first three ingredients, the bag is mostly filler, whatever the front of it says. This one habit will do more for your feeding budget than any feeder you buy.

How much seed will you actually get through?

More than you expect, and the answer is a function of capacity, not appetite. A two pound tube at a busy autumn station empties in a couple of days. A twelve pound hopper can run for weeks — which sounds better until you remember that seed sitting damp at the bottom of a hopper for three weeks is exactly how mold starts.

The arithmetic, the storage rules, and what it realistically costs to run a feeder are in what it costs to feed birds and how to store bird seed.

Seed decides which feeder you need

This is the connection nobody makes on the shop floor. Nyjer will pour straight out of a sunflower port. Sunflower will bridge and jam in a nyjer port. Peanuts need a mesh cage. Suet needs a wire cage or a tail-prop panel. Choose the food first, then buy the feeder that holds it — not the other way round.

If you have not chosen a feeder yet, read feeder types alongside this, and if you want the whole first-purchase decided for you, the starter kit lists the seed, feeder and hardware as one set.

One thing to get right on day one

Buy the smallest bag that will last you about a month. Seed is a food product: it goes stale, it absorbs damp, and old nyjer in particular is the single most common reason a finch feeder sits ignored. A twenty-five pound bag is only a saving if you can keep it dry and get through it before it turns.