Marg, I've been doing this for a little less than a year, so take what I say with a grain of salt! :) First, maybe you could put nyjer in the finch feeder only. Then if the finches want it, they will go there. That's if you want to continue with the nyjer. If you keep nyjer in the tray feeder they have no incentive to try the finch feeder. I do feed differently in the summer; I worry more about keeping up with the birdbaths because the birds seem to use them more. They have so much more food available to them (bugs, plants, etc.) But I do put out a fruit and jelly feeder, a no-melt suet, and nyjer and BOSS, and sometimes sunflower hearts, raisins,and berries. I do keep more food out in winter. When it snows they always come here for some seed or suet. The birds do like garden flowers and seeds even better than the foods we put out though. I came home one day to drive up and see a ton of goldfinches all over our large butterfly bush. And they love the sunflowers of course, and the bugs in the vegetable garden. I hope this has somehow been helpful. Hang in there! :) And good for you for putting the plants in - I am doing that too, and it's more work but it will be worth it. bandgsmom - thanks for your reply. All I can say is, that's the way our finches divide up at the feeders. It's been true for almost a year now. And when I put a goldfinch feeder away from the other birdfeeders last summer, they really loved that.

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.

I feed 2 types of suet or lard - the plain raw beef suet in a suet cage, and a home-made mixture of rendered fat (suet or lard) with peanut butter, corn meal and flour, nuts, etc. Rendered suet stays solid at higher temperatures - I think it's in the 90s F - than unrendered suet. I do feed the raw suet year round and it doesn't melt because we don't get temps in the 90s that often, and also the suet cage is sited on the north side of a large tree trunk so it has little sun exposure. The woodpeckers love the raw suet but many other birds will nibble on it too. Many birds also love the home-made mixture, and the Bluebirds come every winter to eat nuggets. This past winter I had up to 12 bluebirds! But I feed much less of all the bird food in the summer because there are usually plenty of insects for them to eat.

It took the birds 6 months to find my nyjer feeder when I first put it out. When they finally found it, the goldfinches attracted other birds to my other feeders. I had them hanging off the bottom of our seldom-used 2nd story deck, so they were semi-shaded. I also made a "bird bath" out of a boot tray - it was less than an inch deep and a good 2' long and about 16" wide. It was black, so I wouldn't put something like that out in the sun. I changed the water and scrubbed it out every day, and "sterilized" with vinegar (and rinsed and scrubbed again) about once a week. I sterilized the scrub brush in a bucket of bleach water overnight before sterilizing the "bird bath" the next day, so that the brush was fresh and clean for the post-vinegar-bath scrubbing. So - the night before, on cleaning day - I dump and scrub the bird bath; then fill it with vinegar; put the brush in the bleach water. Next morning, dump the bleach water and the vinegar thoroughly rinse the brush and let it dry in the sun (helps drive off any remaining chlorine). scrub out with the sterilized brush Thoroughly rinse the bird bath; start over again This winter I hope to make a large ceramic platter (I'm an amateur potter) with a glazed interior that will tolerate being sterilized with a bleach solution. I plan to bury that to it's lip in one of my raised beds and keep it filled with water via a dripper line. I'll make something similar for use as a butterfly puddler. Having a water feature can only help in attracting birds, but patience will help as well. One thing I would suggest is to get rid of the "songbird mix" and feed only black oil sunflower seed, safflower seed, and nyjer (in a tube feeder), in the way of seed. Every "songbird mix" I've ever seen has a high proportion of "junk" seed in it which attracts house sparrows, to your peril. At my former residence, they weren't much of a problem, but here they have mobbed my feeder to the point where I had to stop using it. They even scared my hummers away, as well as the mountain jays, mountain blue birds, and quail. Sadly, their seed scattering ways seemed to actually ATTRACT pigeons, LOL! I'm going to try to put the sunflower seed (which has to be hulled due to the former owner of this place having put in Astroturf - impossible to clean sunflower hulls out of) in a mesh feeder that only clingers can use and see if that helps. Otherwise, it's hummingbird feeders and the quail block, and the nyjer mesh feeders I have, and that's all I'll be able to put out here. Maybe an upside-down tube feeder. But nothing for the house sparrows!