Fillinng our bird feeders yesterday exhausted our seed inventory. This morning I went shopping. I buy seed and other feeding supplies from two vendors. One sells black oil sunflower seed, our mainstay, in 50-pound bags, the other in 40-pound bags. I prefer the 50s, so today I drove to Maple Plain, an easy drive from our neighborhood. For years the store I visit was named the Hennepin Co-Operative Seed Exchange, Inc. Recently, it was purchased by Waconia Farm Supply, and now uses that name. The store inventory is being expanded, but for my needs there are no changes.The sunflower cost me $16.95, a reasonable price, perhaps a low price depending on where you shop.
I also bought, as an experiment, 8 pounds of what the supplier calls finch mix. I usually stay away from mixes, particularly those containing milo, millet, and rape seed. Those seeds sit in the feeder (at least in ours) until I take them away. This mix contains niger seed (good), sunflower parts (good), rape seed (I'd be surprised), and something called canary seed. My first thought about canary seed was that it had a different name but was being sold as canary seed because buyers would believe the so-called canaries (goldfinches) coming to their feeders would eat it. I wondered, what kind of canaries? Caged canaries? Coal-mine canaries? Jailhouse canaries? Or misnamed goldfinches?
I went to Google, and by golly, canary seed comes from canary grass, a legit crop. What's more, if you believe a study done in Mexico (and cited on several other Google sources), canary seed is a wonder food. We should be eating it. It even is pressed for canary seed milk (not locally available). So, my hopes are high for canary seed and this mix. It will go in one of the two small feeders attached with suction cups to the glass of a patio door. Both feeders are well used, sunflower chips beng the current fare. I'll keep that in one, put the mix in the other, and see what happens. I paid $9.65 for the mix, by the way. And if it goes unloved, this spring I will toss it on the ground near our over-grown brush pile, where migrating sparrows of various species hang out. Hungry migrants might not be fussy.
My third purchase was a 20-pound Purina Premium Wildlife Block, 30 different ingredients held together by molasses. Some of the ingredients are grain products. Most of the rest could be found on the label of a One-A-Day vitamin bottle. The packaging contains images of chipmunk, Gray Squirrel, Blue Jay, and a bunny. We have all of those animals here, plus several others. The label says this product is "designed to be fed year round as a supplement to a squirrel's natural diet." Wonderful! A squirrel enhancer. This is not the direction in which I've been moving. But. We'll see. This builder-of-stronger-better-squirrels cost $9.95. If you let the block sit directly on your lawn, by the way, it will kill your grass. Come thaw, I'll have to put it on a low platform. Or, I might place it deep, deep in our woods.
More on all of this later, as the experiments advance. I doubt this is what was in mind when the term "citizen science" was coined.
