Dealing with Starlings, Grackles, Doves and Pigeons

Sometimes you just have too many nuisance birds. They can eat more than their share of food and chase other birds away. However, you can be a seasonally savvy hobbyist by anticipating the arrival of your problem birds and implementing the following solutions to keep these birds from monopolizing your feeders.

The Right Food

We offer a variety of foods to help you deal with nuisance birds at your feeders.

• Feed black oil sunflower seeds in the shell or the larger, harder-shelled striped sunflower seed. Both are difficult for sparrows and starlings to open. 
• Instead of sunflower seed, offer only safflower seed. Grackles and starlings do not seem to like this seed and usually leave it alone. 
• Offer high quality blends in tube feeders and consider removing the feeder's perches. Small birds can land on the seed ports just fine, while larger birds can hang on to the port for only a short time and thus eat less food. 
• Offer only pure rendered suet cakes as European Starlings often ignore them. Starlings are attracted to the other ingredients (like peanuts) in suet-blend cakes more than just plain suet.
• Don't offer foods containing cracked corn and millet that are favorites of House Sparrows, European Starlings, Rock Pigeons, and Grackles.

Feeder Solutions

Deter larger birds from visiting your existing feeder by adding an On-Guard™ wire mesh cage. Our On-Guard solutions are designed to allow smaller birds access but prevent larger birds from reaching the food inside. We offer a variety of cages that easily fit on our Quick-Clean seed tube feeders, finch feeders, and peanut feeders, as well as some specialty feeders for suet & seed cylinders.

Solution Feeders

We offer a variety of feeders that help you feed only the birds you want.

• EcoTough® Upside-down Suet Feeder - This feeder is designed to allow birds to feed from below, a comfortable practice for woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and other clinging birds but difficult for starlings.
• The Eliminator™ and Fundamentals Squirrel-proof feeders. Both of these feeders are weight-sensitive and will close off access to the food when heavier visitors sit on its perch.
• Gilbertson Bluebird Feeder. This feeder helps restrict starlings from eating mealworms or specialized foods you put out for insect eaters like bluebirds and wrens.
• Suet Log Cylinder Feeder. This feeder is disguised to look like tree bark. With no perches it is hard for starlings and blackbirds to dominate this feeder for long periods of time, but is a favorite for woodpeckers and nuthatches.