I feed different seed mixes depending on the season.
Winter & Fall:
It's pretty much anything goes this time of year. Black oil sunflower seeds, peanut hearts, dried cherries, millet, red milo, safflower seeds. Basically any store bought mix will be consumed. Suet blocks are a favorite with the woodpeckers, chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches. Although I have caught the Flickers pigging out at the regular feeding station on the mixed seeds and on my black oil feeder.
Birds that frequent my feeders in the winter: Chickadees, titmice, juncos, house & cassin's finches, pine siskins, white-crowned sparrows, fox sparrows, chipping sparrows, steller's & scrub jays, flickers, white-headed woodpeckers, acorn woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, nutall's woodpeckers, red & white breasted nuthatches, pygmy nuthatches (my favorite little guys), towhees (ground feeding with there two feet at the same time scratching, fox sparrow does this too), and lots of quail. With all this activity comes the Raptors. Cooper Hawks, Red Tailed Hawks, Red Shouldered Hawks and Kestrels have hunted in my backyard. Then, to clean up any messes there is the ever so pesky, curious, comical and mischievous Ravens.
Spring Time:
It's pretty much the same lot as above, minus the white-crowned sparrows, fox sparrows and juncos. Although there are some juncos that stick around all year long. I generally stick with the same seed mix, but cut back on the amount of millet. Suet blocks are great in the spring. I have found that a lot of birds like to use this as food during the raising of their chicks as it must be easy for them to regurgitate. They also bring the fledglings to the blocks and seem to use them as training stations or as I like to say, they use them as "Weaning Blocks" every year the acorns and flickers will bring their young to them, get them involved in eating off them and then try to sneak away. It's quite comical at times.
Summer Time:
This is were I totally do away with feeding any millet. Millet seed, as I have found over the years, tends to just go to waste (getting pushed to the ground and ending up becoming ground cover during times of rain). I actually had a nice plush carpet of the stuff (about 3inches thick) one time that made me decide to just quit feeding it altogether. So since millet seems to be like a useless filler during the summer, I tend to search for mixes that do not contain any millet (which is hard to find at times). Petsmart does carry a couple brands that don't have any.
Other than that, for summer feedings I usually stick with the year round favorite of black oil sunflower seeds as a staple. For a treat, I fill the thistle feeders from time to time (but not always as we all know how expensive thistle is, it's like gold compared to all the other seeds). And contrary to belief that finches like the little lesser gold finches won't eat nothing else, they will in fact eat the black oil sunflower seeds like everyone else when no thistle is available. A tip to keep thistle fresh and from spoiling fast or getting musty (which it tends to do really fast) while storing it, is to keep it refrigerated.
Now on to the question of suet blocks in the summer. I tend to stay away from feeding suet blocks altogether in the summer unless they are of the "no-melt" variety. During the hot days the suet will melt, which can tend to stick and soil the plumage of the birds which can cause problems. There are a lot of blocks that have no rendered beef suet in them that can be purchased for summer feeding.
Summer Birds that I have seen at my feeders: Most of what was mentioned in the fall and winter with the same exclusions as in the spring, but joined with lesser goldfinches & black-headed grosbeaks. Robins started feeding at the feeder since the mix I use contains dried cherries, as a treat I sometimes place out raisins which they like too. Last year I had a western tanager that grew a liking to some grapes I threw out for the robins.
As a fun treat for the blue birds, I order meal worms from time to time and place them in a special feeding box near an area they are nesting in.
To much of my surprise, the orioles visit my hummingbird feeders so I have no need to have one of those special feeders just for them. Occasionally when I buy oranges, I will slice them and hang them by the hummer feeders though as they tend to really guzzle down and drain the hummer feeders fast. Also from time to time, a sap sucker will decide that he wants a sweet drink and hang awkwardly from the hummer feeder to refresh himself.
To much of my dislike brown-headed cowbirds and starlings will invade the feeders which I try to discourage for a number of reasons that I'm sure the Naturalist could fill you in on. Starlings are a pest and can carry all sorts of nasty things that can be passed to other birds and humans as well. But they do make for great target practice for me with my pellet rifle.
Anyhoot, that's about it for my backyard bird feeding report. Backyard birding is a wonderful and relaxing hobby. Maybe one day we should start a Wrightwood Backyard Birders Club. In the meantime, enjoy and have fun.
