Our bird-feeder practices have been routine for years. Two reasons: don't fix what's not broke, and we work around squirrels. A friend recently gave us four small egg-shaped seed clusters, a variety of seeds stuck together and hung from a thread. I put them out yesterday, near our usual tube feeders. It took chickadees about two minutes to find the seed balls. They chose them over the sunflower bits in the tubes nine times out of 10. I've noticed on the Cornell Lab feeder web cam that a similar conglomeration of seeds also is popular there. As soon as I either figure out how to keep squirrels away (they destroy the balls in minutes), or simply give it to that fact, we will hang more seed balls. Our local bird store has many in different configurations, holding a variety of seed types, including sunflower, plus feeders to hold them.
