I have a bird feeder in front of my house and I fill it up with this generic bird seed that has many different kinds of seeds. I’ve watched the birds come up there and eat but then they take the corn kernels and toss them out. A bunch of the corn has fallen on the ground and now I have corn growing!
now I have corn growing!
Used to work for a birdseed store, no joke, that was actually the main focus. Corn takes a lot of energy to digest apparently, in terms of birdseed. Certain birds will eat it if there is nothing else, but they’re more likely to go after other things first. If I remember correctly, Midwesterners had the best chance of having birds eat corn out of their birdseed (I’m US-based, so can’t speak to other places). Of course that makes sense; that’s where we grow corn, so it’s no shock that there are birds there that will eat it.
The other thing to watch out for in generic mixes is milo seed. It is a small round ball with a dot, bigger than millet. Ground feeders (such as doves) will eat millet and digest it, but milo will go right through their system undigested and then sprout. It’s a cheap filler.
Jokes on them, this just means next year there will be even more corn in the feeder!
We have some little sparrows that just go in there and motorboat the bird feeder, so there’s plants from the seed growing all over under our feeder haha. No corn though, that is pretty cool!
Finally! Corn is back!
Had one stalk pop up a couple years ago, right in the front yard. Let it grow. It got like 5’ tall, but the ears didn’t really develop. I’d see people driving by give it a second look, sometimes, and wondered what they might be thinking. Always gave me a little chuckle.
