If you call…
… they will come.
Lunch Time
But wait! Humans have a role to play here. These sunflowers originated with a charity giving them away in search of support. The one below, on the other hand…
… is a human food crop, with giant stalks. Very impressive to humans, but used only intermittently by birds… as a perch. I had red-winged blackbirds devour these 25 years ago in the Cariboo, but there are no red-winged blackbirds here, because humans have filled in their swamps. Pity, that. They were meaning.
Categories: flower gardening
Okanagan Okanogan 
Ooh. Why a house sparrow on the photo? Don’t you have chickadees, downy and hairy woodpeckers eating the seeds? I grow sunflowers for beauty and birds and never eat any of the seeds myself. Sunflowers and hemp are two of the best plants human can grow in their gardens in this region (Bulkley Valley) because the stalks stand up longer in the snow and they provide seed in large amounts. Mostly the birds–those mentioned above plus song sparrows, Lincoln sparrows, juncos–have the plants stripped of seeds by December.
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There has been a complete failure of birds in the Cariboo and south this year. It’s a tragedy.
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