10/17/2026
Goodbye Hummingbirds; Hello Winter Visitors and Migrants!
While the end of the hummer season may disappoint many people, the lovely trade off is that we are now welcoming a new set of birds who will stay with us all winter (White-throated Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, and Dark-eyed Juncos), or are traveling through (Eastern Towhees). While not in all their names, these birds are all varieties of native sparrows. Unlike non-native house sparrows, who have a reputation for being pugnacious at the feeders, our native sparrows tend to dine quietly on the ground and have the bonus of unique colors or patterns in the plumage. There can be variations within species, and I'll touch on that in a future post. One of their favorite foods is white millet, a small cream-colored seed (not to be confused with milo, the small reddish colored junk grain found in discount store blends). We stock it both with and without hulls (shells), and personally I use the hull-free to keep the landscape tidy. These birds don't like to be crowded, so I scatter a line of it along the edge of our landscape beds, where it doesn't get lost in the grass. In mulch or leaf litter, you can watch these birds do a bit of a funny backward hop-scratch, like tiny chickens, as they look for seeds. Most squirrels don't find the tiny millet worth their effort, so it's not typically a concern. You can pick up a bag of millet when you visit us, or order online. On our store page, type "millet" into the search bar to find straight millet and our blends that contain it. https://order.wbu.com/springfieldil/bird-food
