Bundle: Wild Delight Deck, Porch N' Patio Wild Bird Food, 5-lb bag & Wild Delight Nut N' Berry Wild Bird Food, 20-lb bag

While I have tried other nut & berry combination bird food, this is wings down the most popular of the bird seed mixtures I've put out, attracting a wide variety of bird friends, including a couple I hadn't seen for awhile like goldfinches and carolina wrens .I am hoping that the goldfinch will stick around for spring when the males have their bright yellow finery. I have also seen a few white-throated sparrows pecking away below the feeders, especially on snowy days. No surprise, because of the nut content, this mixture is also extremely popular with the woodpeckers in the area--yellow-shafted northern flickers, downy woodpeckers, and red-bellied woodpeckers. We also see some regular house sparrows, house finches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, brown thrashers, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, bluejays, and LOTS of cardinals! I am sure I am forgetting many occasional visitors. If you pair the seed with some suet or mealworms, and a source of fresh water, you will pull in other birds who might not be big seed eaters, but this is definitely a great choice to buy even if it costs more than some other bird foods. If I had any complaint about the product at all, it would be that I feel that it is TOO popular--the birds really go crazy for it, and smaller feeders need to be refilled at least a couple times daily. We don't have a squirrel problem since we have had great success with a baffle and we locate the feeder station where the squirrels can't just jump on it from above. However, they get to eat whatever the birds drop, especially if the starlings happen by (yep, those things too--but they have not been as big a problem this fall and winter --partly because they are incredibly clumsy and seem to have trouble comfortably perching on the feeders), But, yeah, squirrels and chipmunks go "nuts" when there is a generous amount of seed that has fallen on the ground for them to eat (plus sometimes I just give them a bit). And speaking of "ground", the Nut N' Berry Seed came with the Deck, Porch N' Patio seed. This mixture has no shells at all, while the Nut N' Berry does contain some shelled seeds such as striped sunflower seeds and safflower seeds, but nothing that would be considered "filler" such as milo, or even corn or millet. My thought on the Deck, Porch & Patio mix, is that if this hadn't been part of the bundle, I wouldn't have really gotten it since it is very expensive for the size of the bags it comes in. In the past, I have tried it, especially back when we lived in an apartment with an actual patio, and got tired of sweeping up the seed hulls so they did not fall onto the neighbor's porch below. Now, the seed is falling directly on the often damp ground, so it gets wetter and dirtier than if the shells were still on. Luckily, it is apparently tasty, and it isn't down on the ground for very long, but if you don't need to worry about shells or seeds sprouting up (unshelled seeds will not sprout) then you probably don't need the deck seed. I don't even have to worry about sprouting seeds because I have too many birds and furry critters eating it before it can grow, and the yard is very shady during the warmer months.