Ronnie, That would be great. Send your address.....we have traded in the past but I don't remember your address. Kathy

Oh, I'm so jealous of your grosbeaks and redpolls, Pudge! I think my neighbor is feeding too well, because the grosbeaks are always hanging around there and I'm lucky if they pop by for a brief visit. I did get some Evening Grosbeaks in for a good feed this spring and again this fall. That was a thrill to spot them, as I hadn't seen them before. I haven't seen a redpoll for about 3 years now. I find them so cute. The last time I saw a flock of them was early in the spring/late winter. Do they stay around all winter? Someone told me once that they cycle...and I don't remember why...was it their migration pattern maybe? I'd be interested to know if someone had any thoughts on that. I also had my first White Breasted Nuthatch yesterday! Another cutie and fun to watch...very vocal. He was still here this evening. RE: salt and birds...I'm thinking they probably require certain amounts naturally and find it somewhere, but with bird feeder fast-food that contains salt, they might eat alot of it because its easy to get and therefore get too much salt. Sound familiar? ie. potato chips! Gil, I wonder if the nuthatches would like your suet bars? Toots

I had a problem with Doves raking out my hopper feeder and emptying everyday. I now only fill the hopper half full every 5 days or so and use the tube feeder. I'm down to putting out about 2 quarts of BOSS a week. The Doves visit much less, but the Nuthatches and Chickadees seem to be happy the feeder is alot less hectic and hang around more. A side benefit is the amount of waste is much less and the lawn mower seems to disperse it enough. I'll probably only feed more when I expect alot of migrants in the area. Providing unlimited easy access food only seems to encourage the undesireables to congregate in your yard in my experience. It also leads to more rodents in the area, which brings in things that eat rodents. So now I focus on much more targeted feeding and it is just as, if not more rewarding as when I went through 10x more food.

If they are the very large seeds (gray-striped or black-white striped variety), very few birds will eat them because they are too hard to open. The exception would be cardinals, grosbeaks and jays. Most of the smaller feeder birds, finches, chickadees, nuthatches, sparrows, etc, can only successfully open the smaller all black, black-oil sunflower seeds. That may be the problem. BN