Garden Visitors

A lot of people have butterfly and hummingbird gardens because they want to attract certain types of colourful "visitors" to their garden. But what if, like me, you want all different types of creatures to visit?

Well, you can plant a mix of trees and bushes, which we have duly done. (The trees are helping with privacy too.) And you can provide food.

A word about what food to provide: black oil sunflower seeds. (Thistle seed for finches, but only a reliable brand name, unless you want a carpet of thistle sprouts.)

Our warehouse store changed its supply of seed, so we decided to try a birdseed blend instead of our usual. Well, the result has been interesting.



The squirrels have all but disappeared. The grackles have taken over. They use their big beaks to toss the yellow seed all over the place, hunting for the few black oil sunflower seeds in the mix.

To top it off, at least black oil sunflower seeds are black, which is a good colour to blend into the ground around the feeder. Now we have a big pile of yellow mess to look at, no squirrels to amuse us, and big fat grackles showing their disdain for our seeds. I somehow don't think we will continue this experiment any longer than we have to.