Today, bird feeding is a multimillion dollar business, and most bird seed mixtures are a combination of just four ingredients.
By Karl Anderson
Back in the early 1900s, a magazine called Bird Lore was "published for the Audubon Societies."
It contained field notes, bird club news and bird observations. I remember a statement about feeding wild birds that said "scatter some scratch feed on the snow and many birds will come."
Ah, those were simpler times. Most of the arable land in New Jersey was farmed, many farms had a few chickens, and "scratch feed," an informal mixture of small grains, was a familiar item.
But today, bird feeding is a multimillion dollar business, and most bird seed mixtures are a combination of just four ingredients: sunflower, proso millet, milo, and corn.
Of these, sunflower seed is the only component that was originally native to North America. There are several grades, but for bird feeding black oil seed is the most used. Almost all birds like it, and the species that can't break the shells will hang around a bird feeder picking up fragments left by other birds.
Proso millet is a small shiny seed, about a 16th of an inch in diameter, that occurs as either a white or rust-colored variety. Also called broomcorn millet, it's the seed of a grass, Panicum miliaceum, that has been cultivated in the Old World for thousands of years.
It was the staple grain of the ancient Romans until they conquered Egypt in 31 BC and began importing wheat. In a bird seed mix, millet is the favorite food of small ground-feeding birds like sparrows and juncos.
A somewhat larger seed, about an eighth of an inch in diameter, rusty red and dull surfaced, is milo. This is the seed of another Old World grass, Sorghum bicolor. There are many varieties. Some have sweet sap and are grown to produce sugar, but in the United States most are grown for animal feed.
Doves, house sparrows, and blackbirds will eat milo but not many other "songbird" species will if they have a choice in the matter.
Corn, usually cracked into small pieces, is found in many bird seed mixtures. Everybody knows or should know that this crop originated in Mexico around 9,000 years ago and slowly spread into North America, where it was grown by many of our indigenous peoples. As a bird food it's not particularly favored by any species. Cracked into small pieces, it is eaten by sparrows and doves.
One last seed to mention is called "Nyjer," a proprietary name for a seed that was traditionally known as niger (rhymes with tiger), or incorrectly as "thistle seed." This plant is a tall branching herb of African origin.
It bears multiple yellow flowers that look like small sunflowers, but most of the seed that is on the market is imported, has been heated to kill weed seeds, and won't grow. This is a favorite food of small finches, especially the goldfinch, and it is usually presented by itself in a special feeder.
For information about the Gloucester County Nature Club, see gcnatureclub.org/
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