I have plenty of goldfinches on my sunflower heart feeder, and beside it, for the past year, I have placed a nyjer feeder and refreshed it every month with new seed. Not a single goldfinch has bothered with it. They sometimes use the nyjer feeder as a place to queue up while waiting their turn on the sunflower hearts, but even then, they don’t bother to eat it. So it’s going out. I used to get lots of goldfinches on the nyjer feeders, but they seem to have gone off it. Anyone had a similar experience?
bye for now
I always found that it wasn't a case of them going off nyjer seed - more a case of preferring sunflower hearts. With the nyjer seed they are using their perfectly shaped bill to pick up one or two little seeds at a time, so a long time to feed up especially as you keep getting knocked off the feeder by the rest of the gang. With sunflower hearts you get a big meal every bite - I know which I would go for.
Hi, I feed both Niger and sunflower seeds and find they eat both, as Bob has said it takes more time to eat the Niger seed in the time that they can have a good feed of sunflowr seeds. My two feeders are on the same stand.
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