The Flock Has Spoken

It's early migration time along the Pacific Flyway, and the finches are beginning to make thier presence known. Most years I notice this more when I go to buy purchase seed than from actual observation of more birds at my feeders. Niger thistle see completely disappears from the shelves.

I had one notable exception here! One season when I could tell from the birds on my deck that it was major migration time. Three times a day that week (early morning, middle of the day, and one-two hours before dusk) I would average 100 finches on my deck.


Visiting the petstore this week, the empty shelf syndrome has struck. No black oil sunflower seed and no niger thistle seed. As I was completely out of seed for the finch feeder and that is my most popular feeder, I decided to substitute with the Audobon Society's Finch Festival. According to the Audobon Society website:

Finch Festival - "The Energizer" - A high-energy, high-protein food source for smaller birds such as finches, sparrows, siskins, redpolls, and juncos and towhees.

My thistle feeder still has about 4" of thistle seed servicing the bottom-most ports in the tube feeder, but I "topped off" the feeder with this mix.

Yesterday the birds finished off all the new seed, totally ignoring the thistle seed still available to them. And this morning the action continues. I have about dozen finches and juncoes waiting their time at the two top seedports and totally ignoring the available ports below.

Guess when they take a break I really need to just toss the thistle seed and give these birds what they want: A Festival.