Bird Food
Bird Seed Mixes: Reading the Label
The ingredient list is printed in order of weight, which makes a bag of bird seed one of the few products you can judge accurately in ten seconds in the aisle.
The short answer
- Ingredients are listed heaviest first. If milo, wheat, oats or red millet appear in the first three, put the bag down.
- A good mix is mostly sunflower, white proso millet and cracked corn in sensible proportions. A mix that is nothing but sunflower is also a good mix.
- Milo (sorghum), wheat, oats and red millet are cheap grains that most feeder birds throw on the ground, so you pay for them twice: once at the register and again in cleanup.
- Compare price per pound of seed the birds actually eat, not price per pound of bag. A cheap mix that is half filler is not cheap.
- Look through the bag: you should see recognizable seed, not dust, hulls, red-brown round grains or a fine powder at the bottom.
Bird seed labels list ingredients in order of weight, heaviest first, in the same way food labels do. That one rule is enough to sort the shelf: if the first three ingredients are sunflower, millet and cracked corn, the bag is worth buying, and if milo, wheat or oats appear that high up, it is not.
The economics are the reason the shelf looks the way it does. Sunflower is the expensive ingredient, and cheap grains bulk out a bag at a fraction of the cost. What ends up on the ground under your feeder is roughly the difference between the two.
Below: what each common ingredient is, which birds actually eat it, the physical tests worth doing on a bag before you buy, and the two or three cases where a mix genuinely beats a single seed.
Read the ingredient list first#
Turn the bag over and read the first three ingredients. That is 80 percent of the decision.
Good first ingredients: black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts or chips, striped sunflower, white proso millet, cracked corn, safflower, peanut pieces, nyjer.
Bad first ingredients: milo, sorghum (the same thing), wheat, oats, barley, rice, canary seed, flax, rapeseed, red millet, golden millet.
Meaningless label words: "premium", "gourmet", "deluxe", "wild bird food", "songbird blend", "attracts more birds". None of these are defined terms and none tell you anything. Some of the worst mixes on the shelf carry the fanciest names.
If a bag lists ingredients as percentages, better still. If it lists no ingredients at all, that is its own answer.
What each ingredient is for#
| Ingredient | Who eats it | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Black oil sunflower | Nearly everything: chickadees, finches, cardinals, titmice, nuthatches, jays | The backbone of any mix |
| Sunflower hearts | Same list, plus small-billed birds | Excellent, no hulls, spoils faster |
| White proso millet | Juncos, sparrows, doves, buntings, towhees | Good, but ground feeders only |
| Cracked corn | Jays, doves, sparrows, blackbirds | Fine in small proportions; molds fast when wet |
| Safflower | Cardinals, chickadees, house finches | Good; squirrels and grackles mostly refuse it |
| Peanut pieces | Woodpeckers, jays, titmice, nuthatches | Good, but goes rancid faster than seed |
| Nyjer (thistle) | Goldfinches, siskins, redpolls | Fine alone, wasted in a mix |
| Milo / sorghum | Almost nothing east of the Rockies | Filler |
| Wheat, oats, barley | House sparrows, starlings, some doves | Filler |
| Red or golden millet | Very little; not white proso millet | Filler |
| Flax, canary seed, rapeseed | Almost nothing | Filler |
Milo is the one to learn by sight: small, round, hard, reddish-brown, roughly the size of a peppercorn. If a bag is visibly speckled with those, most of that weight will end up under the feeder, part of the problem described in seed mess, hulls and dead grass.
The two-bag test
Buy a small bag of straight black oil sunflower and a small bag of the mix you are considering. Fill two identical feeders and hang them a few yards apart. Within a week the answer is obvious, and it is nearly always the same answer.
The real cost of a cheap mix#
Price per pound of bag is the wrong number. Price per pound of seed that gets eaten is the right one.
Take a bargain mix where roughly half the weight is milo, wheat and red millet. If your feeder birds reject that half, the effective price of the mix has doubled, which usually puts it above straight sunflower. Now add the costs that do not appear on the receipt: raking out the discarded seed, replacing the grass it killed, and the rodents that a permanent scatter of grain under a feeder eventually attracts.
There is a second, less obvious cost. Rejected seed sits on the ground getting damp, and damp grain under a feeder is where mold gets started. That chain is spelled out in moldy, clumped or wet seed.
The mat under the feeder
Rejected grain does not simply disappear. It builds into a damp layer of seed, hulls and droppings that kills the grass, grows mold, and draws mice and rats to a reliable nightly meal. A cheap mix is the most common cause, and a catch tray plus a switch to sunflower is the fix.
What a good mix looks like#
Two formulas are worth your money.
The general mix. Mostly black oil sunflower, with white proso millet and a modest share of cracked corn. Proportions vary sensibly by maker, but sunflower should clearly dominate the list and there should be no filler grains at all. This suits a yard where you feed a mix of perching and ground-feeding birds.
No mix at all. Straight black oil sunflower, or sunflower hearts. This feeds the widest range of species with zero waste and no sorting, and it is what most people should buy for a tube feeder. Add a separate offering of millet on the ground if you want juncos and sparrows.
The one thing to avoid is putting a millet-heavy mix in a hanging feeder. Millet is a ground seed and the birds that want it are ground birds, so in a tube it just gets raked out. If you are feeding both, use two feeders: a tube for sunflower and a low platform or tray for the millet.
Judge the bag by eye
Good seed looks like seed: plump, uniform, recognizable. Hold the bag up and look for a layer of fine dust and broken hull at the bottom, which means the mix is old, roughly handled or padded with fragments. Give it a squeeze near your ear: fresh seed rustles, and a bag that feels caked or thumps has been damp at some point.
The Southwest exception#
Milo is not universally worthless, which is why blanket advice about it is slightly wrong in one corner of the country. In the desert Southwest, Gambel's quail, doves and several ground-feeding sparrows will eat sorghum readily, and locally sold mixes reflect that.
If you feed in Arizona, New Mexico or west Texas, a modest milo content in a ground mix is a reasonable regional choice rather than a defect. Everywhere else it is filler. Regional patterns are covered in feeding birds in the Southwest.
The same principle applies more broadly: the right mix depends on which birds are already on your ground. Mourning doves, juncos and native sparrows make millet worth buying, and a yard without them makes it a waste.
Hull-free and no-mess blends#
If the seed shells are the real problem, the answer is not a cheaper mix but a hull-free one: sunflower hearts, hulled millet, shelled peanuts and cracked corn, sold as no-mess blends. Nothing is discarded because there is nothing inedible in the bag.
Two trade-offs. Hull-free seed costs considerably more per pound, though much less per pound eaten, and it spoils faster because the protective shell is gone. Buy smaller quantities and keep the feeder dry. The full comparison is in no-mess and hull-free blends.
Extras that look good on the bag#
Manufacturers add visible novelties because they photograph well through clear packaging. Some are worth the money and some are decoration.
Legitimate additions: peanut pieces, safflower, sunflower hearts and cracked corn in small amounts. These are real feeder foods that real birds eat, and their presence usually signals a mix aimed at people who watch their feeders.
Mostly decoration: dyed or sugared dried fruit pieces. Seed-eating birds largely ignore them, and the birds that do want fruit want it fresh, on a spike, as covered in fruit for birds.
Depends how you use it: dried mealworms mixed into seed. They are a genuine food, but they work far better rehydrated in a separate dish than scattered dry through a tube feeder, for the reasons in mealworms for birds.
Seed cakes, bells and cylinders are a different product rather than a mix, and they are worth judging by the same ingredient rule. A cylinder of sunflower and peanut bound with gelatin is good value in a squirrel-heavy yard because it feeds slowly. A bell that is mostly milo glued together is exactly what it looks like.
Buying and storing a bag you are happy with#
- Buy about a month's supply. Seed goes rancid rather than obviously rotten, and birds detect it long before you do.
- Check the bag for chew holes at the store, and pass on any that are stitched shut over a cake of hardened seed.
- Decant at home into a sealed metal or heavy plastic container, off the floor and out of the sun, following storing bird seed.
- Watch the ground for a week after switching mixes. A clean patch under the feeder means you bought correctly. A spreading ring of rejected grain means you did not.
If you want the decision made rather than explained, start with straight black oil sunflower and add a second food only when you know which birds you are missing. The rest of that reasoning is in choosing bird seed.
Frequently asked questions#
What is filler in bird seed?
Filler is cheap grain added to increase weight and lower the price per pound: milo or sorghum (small reddish-brown round seeds), wheat, oats, canary seed, flax and red or golden millet. Most common feeder birds reject these, rake them out to reach the sunflower, and leave them to rot on the ground under the feeder.
Do birds eat milo?
Very few feeder birds in the eastern half of the country do. Milo is mostly rejected by chickadees, finches, cardinals, titmice and nuthatches. In the Southwest it is a different story: quail, doves and some ground-feeding sparrows will eat it, which is why regional mixes there sometimes include it deliberately.
What should be in a good bird seed mix?
Black oil sunflower as the dominant ingredient, plus white proso millet for ground feeders and cracked corn in modest amounts. Sunflower hearts, safflower and peanut pieces are all legitimate additions. If those are the entire list, the mix is worth buying.
Is expensive bird seed worth it?
Often yes, on a per-eaten-pound basis. A premium mix that is entirely sunflower and millet gets eaten almost completely, while a bargain mix that is half milo and wheat leaves half the bag on the ground. Work out the cost per pound of seed that gets eaten and the gap usually closes or reverses.
Why are birds throwing seed on the ground?
They are sorting. Birds flick past ingredients they will not eat to reach the sunflower underneath, so a growing ring of discarded seed under the feeder is a diagnosis of the mix rather than bad manners. Switch to straight black oil sunflower and the ejection stops almost immediately.