As I posted earlier, this worked for me for one winter season. This year the little buggers seem to have developed a taste for safflower and eat it voraciously! Squirrel proof feeders are the only answer, but that makes it difficult to feed the larger birds like mourning doves.

I have noticed feeding Squirrels as well keeps them off the feeder, in fact, one of our squirrels Smokey, seems to be very obedient, and stays of when I ask him

I live in North Central Tennessee. I feed black oil sunflower seed from Wal-Mart abundantly even throw plenty on the ground for the larger birds. I have had tremendous amounts of Cardinals, Blue Jays, Doves, American Goldfinches, Black Capped chickadees, Tufted Titmouse, and House finches among others during this extremely cold weather. You might try making up a mixture of cornmeal, oatmeal, crunchy peanut butter, lard or Crisco, dry cereals and/or small wild bird seeds and put them in a suet feeder. I usually put this in the refrigerator until it is set then put it in the wire suet feeder and hang it near the feeders in winter and during nesting times when they have young. We didn’t have many for a while but keep plenty out for them and they will probably come back. They also need shelter and water sources that are not frozen.

Thank you, Julia. Squirrels love my feeders!
We have an abundance of nuts and fruit here, so go figure. I don’t want to tip the ecosystem though I doubt one feeder makes much of a difference ;)
Since the winter has been so harsh I’ll get the suet out. I’ll keep looking for sources in terms of feeding birds in my area.

Thank you, Sandy. This winter so far has been very cold here. I’ll put out the suet feeder!