I have written a comprehensive post on feeding birds naturally. While I get great enjoyment from my bird feeding stations, providing natural food sources to our feathered friends is always the goal we should aspire to in our gardens. There are several step-by-step “DIY” projects available on both Google and YouTube that will guide you through the process. If you are on a budget or just looking to save some money, making your own cylinders is easy enough. Then it is cut to size and ready for use. The feed is compressed into cylinders and mixed with Gelatin to hold the seed mixtures together. Seed cylinders are a compressed mixture of seed, nuts, and/or fruit and, depending on the mix, insects such as meal worms can be added. This provides more opportunities to use them on any pole system or hung directly in trees. Many of the new cylinder feeders are meant to hang from hooks rather than be inserted directly in the pole. My feeder has a circular perch at the base that surrounds the cylinder, but most of the visitors simply jump on the cylinder and begin helping themselves. Once attached, the seed cylinder (which comes with a hole drilled through the middle of it) is inserted over the spike. The spike feeder simply inserts into the top of the pole system. One of the benefits of investing in a system allows you to easily add various options. Setting up my cylinder spike on the Wild Bird Advanced Pole system was simple. The result, of course, is that the birds’ hard work further breaks down the top of the cylinder and opens it up to the elements. They mostly just stand on the seed cylinder and pound away at it from the top.
I’m not sure our blue jays and woodpeckers would be happy if a roof covered their favourite feeder. Most have a roofing system of some kind built into them to provide top-down protection to the seed cylinders and reduce the amount of premature break down. Today’s cylinder designs solve the problem of an unprotected cylinder open to the elements. Although the birds may appreciate the ease at getting at the seed during these times, I prefer to make them work a little for their dinner. One of the drawbacks to my spike is that it does not provide any protection for the seed cyclinder from rain and snow.Īs a result, the cyclinder can break down prematurely during periods of heavy rain and humidity. (Here is a link to their assortment of cylinder feeders). Since then, Wild Birds Unlimited and other manufacturers have developed a number of newer feeders designed to work with their seed cylinders. At the time there were far fewer choices than there are today, but still enough to convince me to move away from another hopper-style feeder. I was looking to replace my homemade feeder with another similar open hopper-style feeder, but noticed the variety of seed cylinders available with the spike system. I purchased my cylinder spike probably ten years or more ago as a simple, inexpensive solution to replace an aging wooden open feeder. Seed cylinders can give you a few extra moments of enjoyment. At a traditional feeder, the birds often swooping in, grab a bite and take off, before you can even appreciate them. The cylinders help to keep birds at the feeders longer because they have to work at the seeds to remove them from the cyclinders. Click on the link for more on two of my favourite Blue Jay feeders including the compressed seed cylinder. The cylinders are especially great summer food for the woodpeckers during the heat of the summer when traditional suet feeding can be a challenge.īlue Jays are also big fans of the compressed seed cylinders as well. Seed cylinders are long-lasting, which makes them especially useful if filling feeders is difficult for you or you’re going on vacation and will be unable to fill your feeders for several days. They are also super convenient to use and are available in a variety of seed combinations meant to attract different birds at different times of year. Seed cylinders not only bring in a large variety of birds, they keep them at the feeder longer so you can appreciate them more, and a single large cylinder can last for weeks compared to the equivalent amount of feed in a typical hopper-style feeder. I have had my “ simple spike” on my Wild Birds Unlimited Advanced Pole bird feeding station for several years and am so impressed with it that I consider it (and most of the birds agree) my primary feeding source for our backyard birds. When it comes to feeding backyard birds, there really isn’t a better combination than a compressed seed cyclinder fitted to your feeding station. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, cardinals love compressed seed cylinders
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