I had been watching off and on all morning for this guy. The Cardinal is the state bird of Ohio - but we don't have that many around us. The last time we bought seed we bought the bag that said for Cardinals. All I was getting was sparrows. I knew this guy was around and he finally came in for a landing this morning and had some lunch. It is about 8 degrees out there so I was shooting this through my kitchen window. Even the dogs don't want to go out in this.
Beautiful capture, love the feeder too. We have quite a lot of cardinals here in our backyard now, when we moved here we only saw one or two. We feed them black oil sunflower seeds, but they do make a bit of a mess. Fav
Oh, isn't he gorgeous! Great capture, Cathy! Love your feeder - trust you to have a pretty one! You might get more variety of birds if you change your seed to black sunflower seeds.
Fabulous shot!
"cardinal mix" is a trade name, so you can't count on it to steer you correctly, and it looks like that's what's in the feeder. As others have mentioned, black oil sunflower is your best bet, but squirrels like it too. If you can introduce them gradually to safflower seed, most of your desirable birds will eat safflower (cardinals, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, etc) but squirrels generally leave it alone.
So pretty. Love the reds. I just love cardinals and they are so quick and hard to catch. Just dying to find and hang my feeder so that I can get them right by my window.
"cardinal mix" is a trade name, so you can't count on it to steer you correctly, and it looks like that's what's in the feeder. As others have mentioned, black oil sunflower is your best bet, but squirrels like it too. If you can introduce them gradually to safflower seed, most of your desirable birds will eat safflower (cardinals, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, etc) but squirrels generally leave it alone.