WBU Custom Seed Blends

Our Wild Birds Unlimited custom bird seed blends are fresh and 100% edible to birds. Every blend in our store has been selected for the nutritional needs of birds in Western North Carolina. Many discount stores and hardware stores carry bird seed that is old or contains filler seeds that aren’t edible to birds.

WBU seed is delivered to the store once a week so you can count on its freshness. Our blends are designed with specific birds in mind, whether you’re wanting to feed a wide variety of birds or primarily finches or woodpeckers, for example. Beyond the high standards of nutrition and seed quality we have established for our blends we also design blends with ingredients that flow well in the feeders so that we can truly promote the quality of our seed over the competition.

Some of our favorite seed blends:

No-Mess No Millet:

This blend is popular for our customers who prefer not to have the mess of discarded seed hulls under their feeders. It contains a mix of sunflower seeds and peanuts that are already out of the shell and easy for the birds to eat, plus calcium. It can be used in any of our tube, hopper, or tray feeders and the birds love it. It is the best all-purpose blend that works for the greatest number of feeders and meets the regional and seasonal needs of the birds. We carry No-Mess No Millet in 5, 10, and 20 lb bags.

Seasonal Blends:

In the fall and winter, Winter Superblend is packed with protein and fat to help birds keep themselves warm on cool nights. In spring and summer, Nesting Blend has protein, fat, and calcium for bird parents and growing babies. More about specific ingredients. Our seasonal blends come in 7 or 8-lb bags.

Choice Blend:

With a variety of types of sunflowers, safflower, and peanuts, this is a great all-around blend.

Seed Cylinders

Seed cylinders are a fun and easy way to feed the birds. These long cylinders of bird food have holes down their middle and can be placed in a variety of cylinder feeders. (insert some of what Casey wrote for the mailing about the seed cylinder sale.) Birds may stay longer at a cylinder feeder because they must work to get the seeds free, giving you more time to enjoy their presence.

Popular seed cylinders include Hot Pepper, Hot Pepper Cranberry, Hot Pepper No-Mess, Woodpecker, Cranberry, and our seasonal blends.

Suet

Suet is a high-energy, high-fat bird food that is invaluable to birds all year long. To mimic the nutritional protein value of insects our suet includes ingredients like peanuts, tree nuts and/or insects. Insect-eating birds use it as a supplemental food when insects are harder to find. Suet is also a valuable energy source during cold winter months when birds need many more calories to keep their bodies warm.

Suets and other fats are most desirable to birds that eat insects in their various life stages; especially woodpeckers. Birds such as chickadees, jays, and crows eat animal fat in the wild.
Our Wild Birds Unlimited suet is rendered from high-quality beef kidney fat. Rendered, which means melting down, kills bacteria and removes moisture. This gives suet a higher melting point and protects it from spoiling.

Birds that eat suet will still find natural food sources such as insects, insect eggs, and insect larvae to get a well-rounded diet. Chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches, which eat both insects and seeds, will also visit suet feeders often. Feeding suet is a year-round activity. It is fun and exciting to see the different kinds of birds that can be attracted by providing suet!

SuperSuet™ is the best, most nutritionally complete suets and no-melts suets available. SuperSuet products provide super nutrition with the highest levels of protein and fat in our suet lineup. No other suet products on the market have our level of fat and protein.

Finch Food

Finches enjoy eating Nyjer (thistle) and Fine Sunflower Chips.

Nyjer

Nyjer mimics weedy flowers with small seeds such as native thistles, goldenrod and ragweed that goldfinches seek out in open fields. It is a highly nutritious food with high oil content and a good proportion of protein and carbohydrates.

Nyjer is used to attract birds such as the American Goldfinch, Lesser Goldfinch, Lawrence's Goldfinch, Purple Finch, House Finch, Pine Siskin and other small-billed seed eating birds. This seed is typically offered in finch feeders which have very small feeding ports. This prevents the seed from spilling out of the feeder as it would in a normal seed tube.

WBU Finch Blend

Our Finch blend is a mix of Nyjer and fine sunflower chips. Sunflower chips are the other favored food of finches. Sunflower is high in protein and fat. Finches prefer it already hulled. Fine sunflower chips are blended with Nyjer to create our WBU Finch Blend.

We also carry Feeder Fresh, a natural product that you can add to your finch feeder to keep finch food fresh. Finches are notoriously picky and prefer their food to be as fresh as possible. If you can, we recommend storing your finch food in a refrigerator or freezer.

Peanuts

Shelled peanuts attract titmice, chickadees, jays, woodpeckers, and other birds. Peanuts, in or out of the shell, closely mimic many different species of acorns and pine nuts that these birds eat in the wild.

Peanuts in the shell are typically used for feeding squirrels and larger-billed birds such as bluejays. Jays will take a whole peanut and hack it open somewhere or bury it to eat later (caching.) Titmice, chickadees, and nuthatches also enjoy peanuts in the shell. They don't carry them away in the shell, they break open the shell while it's still in the feeder and pull out the peanuts.

Peanuts have high protein and fat levels and are often an ingredient in blends and suet products. Peanuts have one of the highest calories per weight of all seeds and nuts commonly offered at a feeder.

Bark Butter

Bark Butter & Bark Butter bits

Jim's Birdacious Bark Butter is a spreadable suet that is eaten by over 155 species of birds across North America. The success of the spreadable Bark Butter led to the development of Bark Butter Bits. Bark Butter and Bark Butter Bits are available in Hot Pepper versions.

Bark Butter attracts birds such as Thrushes, Warblers, Catbirds, Robins, Orioles, Tanagers, Thrashers, Grosbeaks, Juncos, Woodpeckers, Jays, Chickadees, Titmice, Bushtits, Nuthatches, Brown Creepers, Bluebirds, Chipping Sparrows and many more. Almost every songbird that visits a bird feeder in WNC will eat Bark Butter!

Hot Pepper Bird Food

Hot pepper-treated bird foods keep away squirrels, bears, and raccoons. Humans and other mammals feel the burn when they eat hot pepper foods, but hot pepper does not produce a burning sensation for birds. Their receptors do not fire the same way ours do. Capsaicin does not irritate or damage tissue in the mouth, eyes, or digestive tract of birds. Cornell University has been studying the effect of hot pepper bird food on birds for over 10 years and has deemed hot pepper completely safe for the birds.

Hot Pepper products allow bird feeding to take place almost anywhere. There is no more need for baffles or squirrel-proof feeders. For best results, use feeders that have a roof to prevent wet weather from diluting or washing away the hot pepper oils.

We have an extensive line of hot pepper foods and our hot pepper loose seed formulations have a higher heat level than competing hot pepper blends and have been found to be much more effective at deterring squirrels and other critters.

Mealworms

Mealworms are enjoyed by adult birds and are also fed to baby birds by their parents during nesting season. Birds in our area that enjoy mealworms include the Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and especially Eastern Bluebirds. Tray and cup feeders with tall lips are best for feeding live or dry mealworms to your wild birds.

Live mealworms are especially good for bird parents to feed their young. The moisture content of the live insects helps provide the babies with much-needed water and nutrients. Live mealworms can be purchased and kept for weeks in the refrigerator at 40 - 50 degrees F.

Our live mealworms come in containers with bran flakes are ready to store in your fridge. If you plan to keep your live mealworms for longer than a week, please check in with us for feeding instructions.
Dry mealworms are also great for birds of all ages, with a healthy combination of protein and fat.