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My Goldfinch experiment!

17 years ago

I put out two feeders, one with thistle seed and the other with a combination of thistle and some other seeds. They are patiently waiting in line for the thistle seed feeder and not too interested in the other one. Of course they would have champagne taste being that the thistle is the most expensive.

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Comments (3)

rachel_frome_ky
17 years ago
My Goldfinches devour BOSS..and it's $18 for 40 lbs, so that's o.k. by me!
dzyg
17 years ago
Mine go between the BOSS and the nyjer seed, I usually have both out. I never buy the finch mix anymore, never stayed good for me but I never have a problem with the straight nyjer seed. They also love the sunflower hearts since then they don't have to shell the BOSS =)

Donna
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This doesn't shock me after something I witnessed last year. We seemed to catch the "great goldfinch migration" with literally 40 to 50 finches in our yard during a 1 day period (our normal summer finch activity is 4 to 5 mating pairs of goldfinches and a few house finches). The goldfinches certainly swarmed the finch feeder, but the really weird behavior was how they all lined up at the border between the street and our yard in order to eat dandelion greens. To this day, I hay no idea why they were eating dandelion greens, but there is no question that is what most of the "flock" was doing. But eating chard leaves wouldn't surpise me.
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BOSS = Black oil sunflower seed I don't feed nyjer, just BOSS, home-made suet and raw suet. There seems to be something for everyone this way. The Goldfinches and other finches don't care for suet, but like the BOSS just fine. Last week's ProjectFeederwatch count was 18 Goldfinches, 18 Pine Siskins, and 6 House Finches. Last year, I let some of the BOSS sprout and grow, also grew enormous Mammoth Grey stripe Sunflowers. I observed Goldfinches, Warblers, and Chickadees on the BOSS seedheads, and many different types of birds and squirrels/chipmunks loved the Mammoth grey stripe. It is a lot cheaper to grow these, vs. purchase the seed. Btw, Niger/Nyjer or whatever it's called is NOT thistle (Cirsium species). It is Guizotia abyssinica, an herb grown in Africa and India and imported to the US from these countries. Goldfinches do love the actual Thistle, but care should be taken if growing these plants - they are very prickly and quite a few are classified as noxious weeds.
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A month ago, we had over 40 regularly at the feeders. That was getting expensive. Now, I think what is left is nesting, for they are here in shifts according to gender. There are several females at a time, and then they leave and are replaced w/all males.
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james_m_clark
17 years ago
A few weeks ago when I went to buy more nyger seed, they were all out, so I bought some 'finch mix'. I have two finch feeders, side by side, so I transferred what was left of the nyger seed into one of the feeders, and filled the other with 'finch mix'. The goldfinches clearly preferred the nyger.

Jim

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