I’ve used this thistle feeder for many years. We get lots of birds, often starting in very early spring as the goldfinches start to return. Last year, nobody came. I cleaned it out completely, scrubbed it of anything that may have smelled or tasted bad, and changed the seed. Nada. Even tried putting colored ribbon on it - a suggestion I found on line. Nothing. This spring, I did an even better job of cleaning it and put in fresh seed. Removed the ribbons. Zip. I think if I could attract a few birds, the rest would come, but I can’t seem to even get sparrows to show up. Any ideas on how to get back in the game? Colibri? Anyone?
We have always fed the birds. One year they stopped coming. We realized that a sharp-shinned hawk had taken up residence close by and was swooping in to pick off the little songbirds while they were at the feeders. The little birds decided to move on. After the hawk left the area, the birds returned. We haven’t had that issue again in over 8 years.
Try spreading some seed on the ground under the feeder. The theory is, they don’t know there’s food in the feeder, but if they see it on the ground, they’ll realize it’s food, and figure out where it probably came from.
Know the birds in your area and offer appropriate food in a safe to access location. You mentioned sparrows, they’re ground feeders and will prefer eating seed fallen to the ground around trees. We don’t bother with thistle (niger) because our goldfinches will eat sunflower without complaint.
We feed sunflower and hulled peanuts. Our feeders are in a tree near our living room window for our pleasure, but also because the coopers and sharpshinned hawks that feed on songbirds have a difficult time snatching them from this location.
Any day now orioles will return and I’m ready with oranges to offer them.
Nah, sparrows are sluts. They’ll eat anything anyplace. Sometimes we get so many on our feeder, no other birds can get close. I think I’ll just move the feeder and see if a new spot will make a difference.
It seems goldfinches can be very finicky. I tried putting up niger feeders for a few years and never got much action – in fact, my niger feeders seemed to go totally untouched while I would get a flock of goldfinches sporadically on my other feeders containing safflower, black oil sunflower, and sometimes sunflower hearts.
I even tried putting up the same feeder and seed that my neighbor across the street uses successfully year after year. I can see his feeder from my window, about 150 yards away, but the goldfinches don’t come to mine.
I’ve heard that one thing to do is to be sure the niger seed stays fresh. Don’t put much out unless you have a very active flock. If it gets wet its gets moldy very quickly and the birds won’t eat it.
BTW, the reason I feed safflower seed is because the sparrows don’t eat it.
Also might depend where you are. There is evidence of very significant die-offs in the West and Southwest. Caused either directly or indirectly by our massive wildfire season last year.
And this year is looking ominously grim as drought deepens in the West.
Are you only putting out the one feeder? Thistle is only for a small group of birds like finches, redpolls and siskins. Many birds have too large of a beak to eat out of thistle feeders. If you put out just one feeder, I would put out black oil sunflower seeds. A wide variety of birds will eat them and they are cheap compared to thistle.
If you did lose your birds all at once, chances are you have a predator but it doesn’t have to be a hawk/owl. Cats can rack up a lot of kills staking out feeders.
I wanted to second everything you said about Goldfinches and nyjer seed.
I say this as I watch house sparrows devour the safflower seed in my feeder. I’ve never seen them hesitate to eat it and never read any suggestions that it deters them. Works against Starlings however