It's for the birds

For many years I’ve had multiple bird feeders in my backyard and have enjoyed the variety of birds that come to visit. While there is a fairly consistent group of species most days, I’ve been fortunate enough to capture some of the more rare birds that have come down to sample some seed from my feeders.

I’ve always used the same feed for many years and to avoid the sprouting of seed when it meets the Earth, I’ve opted to use medium (sunflower) chip as it tends to attract a large variety of birds, but also doesn’t mess with my lawn! Here in Calgary, I’m a regular at The Wild Bird Store  .

The house finches are very common at my feeders, but the American Yellow Finch  is new for me and I’ve seen quite a few early in the morning, feeding with the other finches.

Sometimes, when there aren’t enough larger birds ( black-birds  , grackles  , flickers  ) to clean up the seed from the ground, this can attract mice and voles. In this particular situation, it can attract some savvy hunting birds, like the Merlin  , who will quickly sort out the number of rodents in the yard.

Another very common bird we see are the multi-colored blackbirds, but now that we back onto a fairly large swamp, this was the first year we saw the patriarch of the black-birds, the Yellow Headed Blackbird  .

And last but not least, the most recent bird to frequent the feeders, and this is a first for us, is the Downy Woodpecker  . These birds LOVE the medium chip and we get a pretty regular rotation of males (red-head) and females (ladder pattern on back). Here’s a large male, enjoying some breakfast during our October snowfall in 2026.