How And What Are You Feeding Your Northern Cardinals?

Every morning and every evening I have Northern Cardinals at my feeder. I get a few during the day but the most traffic comes at these times. I could set my watch by them. This came in handy when sick House Finches were taking over my squirrel-proof hopper feeder.

The finches were making a nuisance of themselves and making each other sick in the early part of the summer so I had to take action. What I decided to do was take down the feeder during the day and put it back up in early evening. This allowed it to be up at night and early morning when they fed the most. My other visitors, the Chickadees and Titmice also ate most at these times so it worked out well for everybody. The sick finch numbers went down and eventually I was able to put it back up all day again.

What am I feeding them? Right now, I’m feeding straight sunflower seed in the hopper feeder because its design does not allow larger nuisance birds to get anything from it. I have the perch tensions set very light so if anything larger than a cardinal lands on it, it will close off the seed compartment. This has gotten rid of nearly all of the Crows, Grackles and Mourning Doves that used to make it unusable for other birds. The picture above is from last winter. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I usually get out the platform feeder on my patio when it turns cold.

I have also mixed safflower into the sunflower seeds when the weather gets colder because safflower is a very good source of fat calories.

What about you? What are you feeding your Cardinals? What kind of feeders do you use? How do you control the aggressive nuisance birds from taking over your feeders?

Leave me comment below and let’s talk about it.