With almost a foot of snow descending from the skies at my house in the foothills, I worry about the wild critters who are scrounging for food outside. I am very glad that I filled my bird feeders the day before the snowstorm so there would be plenty of abundant food for the birds. Juncos, House Finches, Chickadees and Stellar Jays all compete for room on my feeders and what falls below them.
The favorite birdseed of most birds? Black oil sunflower. This bird seed provides high calories for birds and supplements their usual diet of insects or other seeds. The shells are thin making it easy for birds to crack them open. And this type of sunflower seed has the highest fat and protein content providing a valuable food source for birds struggling to stay warm in winter. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates that a chickadee may eat 35 percent of its weight in food each day while a Blue Jay may eat only 10 percent of its weight and a Common Raven only 4 percent—but they all need more calories on colder days than warmer ones.
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| Photo: Pixabay |
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| Photo: Pixabay |
Black oil sunflower, as the name implies, comes from the common sunflower plant, Helianthus annuus. This plant originated in North America and was cultivated by early western inhabitants who helped spread it to other regions. It eventually spread to Europe and then Russia, who selected it for higher oil content. These higher oil sunflower plants came back to North America and eventually found a large market as a snack food, bird seed and source of vegetable oil.
North Dakota is the #1 state for growing this crop with 50% of all sunflower production. Other top states for production are South Dakota, Kansas, and Minnesota. In North Dakota alone there are almost 2 million acres grown in sunflowers.
You have some different options for providing this bird seed staple to your birds. You can buy bags of it and put it in bird feeders. Or, you can grow sunflowers yourself. Sunflowers are extremely easy to grow and provide a beautiful and fun project for any gardener or child. A variety of seeds can be purchased at nurseries offering a fun range of colors, heights and widths of the sunflower heads. Sunflowers will also grow from uneaten sunflower seeds underneath your feeder, although these are not as attractive and much smaller.
Cool Fact: Have you ever wondered where the birds sock away all that food that they eat? According to Wild Birds Unlimited, a national bird feeding retailer, song birds have a special pouch (crop) in their esophagus that enables them to store food for later consumption or during the night.
