Required fields are marked *. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. . If they did go to a pure suet feeder, they immediately moved off to a feeder with the additions. These typically include things like peanuts or almonds, mealworms or insects. Hawks & Flocks: Predators at Bird Feeders. Home » Problems & Solutions » Nuisance Birds » Suet Starlings and Grackles Won’t Eat? ), Birds Choice Upside-Down Suet Feeder Review, Erva’s Bluebird Feeder and Dried Mealworms, Fewer Mixed Blackbird Flocks at My Feeders, Want to read more posts about birds? There are downsides. Save the black oil sunflower seeds for tube feeders that blackbirds have a hard time eating from. It could be that if I offer it long enough, some or even all of these birds might change their minds and start eating it. (Note: This link goes to a page selling a 12-pack of suet. Upside-down feeders help tremendously, but these birds will still take turns clinging underneath for short periods. I currently have five suet feeders, three hanging on a pole in the back yard and two on a pole out front. Last Updated on October 9, 2020 by Nancie. I was especially interested to see if the annoying spring suet hogs like European Starlings and Common Grackles would eat pure suet they way they do suet with additions. Please Note: My blog includes some Amazon affiliate links. Because it is now late May and warming up in many places, the results of my experiment probably won’t help you with your annoying spring grackles and starlings this year. . Learn how your comment data is processed. Until this past winter, I’ve always used commercial suet blocks that include additions. (Note: See my suet problems post to read more about choosing high quality suet, which additions are good ones and which are not.) If you can’t find it at your local bird store, this Pure Suet sold on Amazon is the type I’ve been using. They rush forward and try to grab it, often snatching food out of the beak of another bird. Find out more about what this bird likes to eat and what feed… I currently have five suet feeders, three hanging on a … Your email address will not be published. (Note: If there are other foods they like offered in feeders they can get into, they will still hang around, but that topic is covered in some of my other posts.). When you subscribe below, you’ll get an email whenever a new post goes up (and ONLY then. But I wasn’t sure if this was just a preference on their part or a true aversion to the pure suet. I’ve been experimenting with this type of commercial suet this winter and spring. So once the temperature rises above about 70F, you need to take the pure suet inside and instead fill the feeders with no-melt/year round versions of suet. I wanted to see which ones liked it and which ones would give it a pass. I’m not sure if it is because they don’t recognize it as food. The common grackle forages on the ground, in shallow water, or in shrubs; it may steal food from other birds. So pure suet is strictly a cold/cool weather food. Starlings and grackles can be a pain on suet feeders. These are the types of suet with the additions. But food can be harder to find when it is colder. All content of this site is copyrighted Nancie Waterman 2013-2020 unless credited to someone else (who probably then has copyright on it.) It is omnivorous, eating insects, minnows, frogs, eggs, berries, seeds, grain, and even small birds and mice. If you serve it up in a traditional cage feeder, crowds of these birds tend to settle on the feeder. Over and over again, I saw that these birds only went for the suet with additions (in this case, peanuts.) I didn’t notice any particular preference between pure suet and suet with peanuts. I participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, “an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.” If you use an affiliate link on my site to go to Amazon and make a purchase within 24 hours, I earn a small fee which helps offset blog related costs. I have seen Tufted Titmouses on the pure suet though. When it got really interesting was after the mixed blackbird flocks arrived in the spring. Blue Jays also don’t seem to like the pure suet either, although they usually go for suet with additions in the spring when they feed their babies. But when the weather got cold late last fall, I tried swapping out one in the back yard and one in the front with blocks of commercial pure suet. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Looking for suet that European Starlings and Common Grackles won’t eat? So, switch to striped sunflowers in your feeders. Or maybe what they wanted from the suet was actually the additions and not the suet at all. (Note: See my suet problems post to read more about choosing high quality suet, which additions are good ones and which are not.). These typically include things like peanuts or almonds, mealworms or insects. Unless it is still cold where you are, don’t try pure suet in your feeders now. Typically four will hold suet with additions and one will be a Pine Tree brand Nutsie block. Starlings Eying a Suet Feeder (parent and fledgling). Other seeds include sunflower seeds, acorns, tree seeds such as sweetgum, wild and cultivated fruits, and garbage. During the winter months, I found that local Downy Woodpeckers and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers were fine with pure suet. Grackles walk around lawns and fields on their long legs or gather in noisy groups high in trees, typically evergreens. (So they didn’t go hungry.) Melting suet can dangerously coat a bird’s feathers. I’ve heard nuthatches will eat it but haven’t seen that yet. Pure suet has downsides, but it is worth adding to your bird feeding bag of tricks. As I sit on my back step typing this, I just saw a Grey Catbird come to the suet feeders and leave without taking any. My goal was to see how my local birds would react to the pure suet. The blog’s focus is on backyard bird watching, especially solutions for problems that come up with feeding backyard birds. Get enough of these birds, and it can still be a problem. Striped sunflower seeds are especially difficult for starlings to open. They eat many crops (notably corn) and nearly anything else as well, including garbage. But mark your calendar in the fall to buy some to try next winter. Once the grackles and starlings saw the change, they lost interest in the suet feeders completely. Promise!). Common Grackles eat mostly seeds, particularly agricultural grains such as corn and rice. When I switched out the suet, they stopped visiting the suet feeders. The second downside is that pure suet melts. They will eat for long periods of time, not giving other birds a chance. Grackles prefer to eat from the ground at bird feeders, making scattered seed an excellent choice of food for them. There is another page on Amazon selling a single block, that works out to be much more expensive per block. . So is pure suet the final magic cure to getting annoying grackles and starlings off your suet feeder? Well, no. Enter your email address to receive email notifications of new posts. First, while the two types of woodpeckers that visit my feeders seemed fine with pure suet, other smaller suet eating birds were less thrilled. It can also make a mess of the feeder and the area underneath it. This spring, I watched the suet feeders to see how starlings and grackles would react to the two types of suet. Birdseed & Binoculars is the blog of Nancie Waterman. It appeared to me that Carolina Chickadees, Carolina Wrens and Tufted Titmouses preferred the suet with additions. Grackles prefer to eat from the ground at bird feeders, and often forage for insects after a lawn trimming. I would sometimes see these birds hop on the feeder with pure suet and then immediately move to the suet with peanuts. I also touch on bird photography, stories about birds and birding field trips. What do grackles eat? (It is pure white instead of the more typical tan.) For now, I put out extra peanuts for them as an apology for the suet change. This was a very pleasant development because it meant that they were only targeting three out of the five feeders. Use feeders that keep … In summer, one-quarter or more of a grackles diet may be animals, including beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, spiders, crustaceans, mollusks, fish, frogs, salamanders, mice, and other birds.Back to top This species often comes to bird feeders. Commercial pure suet seems less common than suet with additions. The reaction of other birds was more mixed.

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