- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Bird-Brained Buying Blunder
I think the birds are annoyed with me and in case this blog makes it into print and eventually lines the bottom of the cage of some canary who can both read English and communicate with its outdoor avian relatives, I wish to express this sentiment:
I am sorry.
It was purely a screw-up on my part, so please don't take out your displeasure on my truck, my wife's SUV or -- heaven-forbid -- the ragtop on our Miata if you see any of them out in the open.
I swear that I did not intend to buy the wrong birdseed. It was unintentional. I was not being cheap -- no pun intended -- it was completely an accident.
Usually I keep the two birdfeeders in our backyard full of black-oil sunflower seeds. The birds -- and one particular squirrel -- love these seeds. This cold winter they've been emptying the one feeder every 2 to 3 days and the other about once a week.
I don't know the caloric makeup of black-oil sunflower seeds, but based on the chunky cardinals, obese mourning doves and other essentially overweight birds whose names I don't know but which congregate in my backyard, they must be high in fat.
I'm actually surprised that most of the frequent visitors to our feeders still can fly. I keep expecting to hear my cable line shear off from the house after one-too-many mourning doves attempt to roost on it. Of course, I take full responsibility if that does happen.
The birds -- and that squirrel -- are fat because I feed them black-oil sunflower seeds, which are apparently as tasty as Chicken McNuggets are to humans. From dawn to dusk, they're out there packing on the fat.
But as I said, I recently screwed up.
I have a trashcan that I store my birdseed in. I bought it specifically for this purpose because all my existing trashcans have holes and aren't what you would call mouse-proof. This can holds just over 100 pounds of black-oil sunflower seeds.
Thanks to the voracious appetite of the birds -- and that squirrel -- the seed that I bought in December was almost gone so I went to replenish our stock at Bucheit's in Jackson.
You can buy black-oil sunflower seeds in many places, but I've found that Bucheit's is slightly cheaper and they sell the seed in the 50-pound bags, which a lot of locations don't carry. Usually, I buy what you could call brown-bag bird feed. It's a generic brown craft paper bag with minimal printing on it.
I think that's where I went wrong this time since one 50-pound brown craft paper bag essentially looks like another unless you read the label. And in this case, rather than buying 2 bags of "black-oil sunflower seeds" I bought two bags of "wild bird seed."
Oh sure, what I bought contains black-oil sunflower seeds along with corn, milo and some seed I have never heard of, but I think the flock that congregates in my back yard can tell the difference.
The feeders are still being emptied, but now it's taking a day or two longer. I just know it's the food. Obviously, black-oil sunflower seeds are tasty to birds, but milo? Perhaps to a bird that is like the difference between a perfectly grilled steak and a can of SPAM to a human. They're both edible, but which one do you really want to eat?
So in case this blog does get printed in the newspaper and then happens to be placed on the bottom of a cage of a canary who can both read English and talk with its outdoor avian relatives, I want to say again that I'm sorry for this mistake.
However, just because you birds may not like this feed as much, does it mean that I'm going to throw it out and re-stock with just the black-oil sunflower seeds.
Sorry, birds, but that is not going to happen. My advice is to keeping gorging on this seed mix. The faster you -- and that squirrel -- eat it, the faster I replace it with what you actually like.
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