Calci Worms

Hello. Over the winter, my garden starlings, blue tits and others have had a voracious appetite for dried and soaked mealworms, in a feeder and a mesh tray. For the past few days, I introduced some  calci worms as well and they haven't been touched at all. Is there any reason for this or are my visitors just fussy? I'm new to bird feeding so I'd be grateful to anyone who can advise me. Thanks.

  • Bit of a late reply sorry so not sure if it's still relevant, but i recently bought a bag of calci worms to try. I have a particular pigeon whom i have developed a funny relationship with and have been feeding over the last couple of months. He visits alone (sneaking off from his mates!) and almost begs at the back door, and is very comfortable with me around now. I recently put out some bird seed out for him as usual, and chucked in some new calci worms too. He sat there staring at the dish, so i came indoors and watched, but he would not approach it. So i went back out and moved the dish a little to try and trigger him into feeding, as he sometimes doesnt realise the food is in there yet. Again he wouldn't approach the dish. So i put another dish out nearby to it, with only bird seed in (no calci worms). He polished that off as usual. I then watched him approach the other dish (the one with calci worms), and have a few very tentative pecks at it, but he would run back a couple of feet away from it after every peck, then he just flew off looking a bit freaked out. Clearly fearful or very unsure. It sounds silly but i wondered if, because the calci worms are quite large and long, they might associate them instinctively with snakes or something?! I also noticed that the sparrows, who are usually voracious eaters of anything i put out, were leaving all the calci worms on the table, and also visited the table less when the calci worms were on there. So i'm not going to bother with calci worms any more unless they suddenly develop a taste for them! It could just be the novelty of them that they are unsure of, and once they have a nibble they might take to them. I should add that all the birds in my garden happily eat standard meal worms.