Sunflower Hearts: Ultimate Seed

If you have not been using sunflower hearts as wild bird food, here are 5 reasons you should give them a try.

1. High Energy Content 
2. They Contain Essential Oils
3. They Are Easy to Eat
4. Lack of Debris
5. Wild Birds Love Them 

1. High Energy Content

Sunflower hearts have the highest calorie to weight ratio and a very high level of protein. This means that wild birds easily get their daily nutrition they require to maintain health.

The benefits of this energy boost are so great that birds known for eating insects are adopting a diet that includes sunflower hearts, sometimes as their main staple food. Take here this blackbird who would normally eat fruit, suet and insects.

This high energy content is also crucial during the breeding season and the colder winter months. As wild birds such as Robins need to eat twice their own body weight of traditional bird food in order to keep warm.  "Quality over quantity" If they are eating food with a higher energy content, such as sunflower hearts they do not have to consume huge volumes of food to obtain the nutrition they require to thrive.  

2. They Contain Essential Oils

Wild birds benefit from the essential oils provided by sunflower hearts, these oils will improve the condition of their feathers to help maintain insulation against damp and cold.

3. Easy Eating

Sunflower hearts are essentially the bird version of fast food, albeit a lot healthier! They are very quick and easy for birds to eat because they take very little time and effort, they also taste delicious.

Being able to eat sunflower hearts so effortlessly leads to birds retaining a very high percentage of the food's overall energy whilst spending very little energy in eating it. 

4. Lack of Waste

Many people find that feeding wild birds can be a messy business and that the mess can affect their lawn negatively. Some seeds will take root quickly and leave you with unwanted plants. This is not the case with sunflower hearts.

Like humans birds will pick out the food they like best first, if you are finding your birds are throwing out some seeds to reach the Sunflower Hearts in a mix then feeding sunflower hearts alone may be a benefit, resulting in less mess on the floor.  Sunflower Hearts are basically de-husked sunflower seeds, the lack of husk also means less mess and it is a lot less likely that any seeds dropped to the floor will grow.

5. Wild birds love them

Lots of people want to know, which birds eat sunflower hearts? The simple answer is that they are the favourite food for many wild birds, particularly Finches.

We always recommend feeding a variety of foods to attract as many different species, however this is not always possible due to limited outdoor space to hang feeders or limited storage space for several kinds of food, if this is the case then Sunflower Hearts will be the best option for you to provide one of the favoured foods for Wild Birds in your garden.

Sunflower hearts will attract a wide array of birds to your garden including, green finches, thrushes, siskins and even goldfinches.

Click here to find out more about Brinvale Sunflower Hearts. 

This article was written by Andy Wiles. If you have any questions or queries about the article you can email contact Andy by email on info@brinvale.com