Sunflower Hearts vs Mixed Seed vs Peanuts: Which Should You Buy?

Three foods make up most of what people buy for garden birds: sunflower hearts, a mixed seed, and peanuts. They are not interchangeable. Here is how they actually compare.

At a glance

	Sunflower hearts	Mixed seed	Peanuts
Birds it brings	Widest range — finches, tits, sparrows, robins, dunnocks	Wide, including ground feeders	Tits, nuthatches, woodpeckers, sparrows
Waste left behind	Almost none	Husks, and uneaten filler in cheaper mixes	Very little
Feeder needed	Seed feeder or tray	Seed feeder, tray or ground	Mesh feeder (essential)
Best season	All year	All year	Strongest in autumn and winter
Entry price	£5.49 / 2kg	£3.49 / 2kg	£6.49 / 2kg

Cost per bag is not cost per bird

Mixed seed looks cheapest by the bag, and often is. But a chunk of a cheap mix is wheat and split peas that most garden birds will not touch, so some of what you paid for ends up on the ground. Sunflower hearts cost more per kilo and almost all of it gets eaten.

The honest answer is that a good mix and sunflower hearts land closer together than the shelf price suggests — and which is better value in your garden depends on which birds turn up.

Which to choose

Buy sunflower hearts if…

You want the broadest range of birds from one feeder, you are tired of sweeping up husks, or you specifically want goldfinches. Sunflower hearts are the closest thing to a default answer in UK garden bird feeding.

Buy a mixed seed if…

You want to feed ground feeders as well — blackbirds, dunnocks, sparrows and collared doves feed on the lawn and under the feeder, not on it. A mix scattered on a bird table or on the ground reaches birds a hanging feeder never will.

Buy peanuts if…

You want nuthatches, great spotted woodpeckers or a busier tit population, and you are feeding through autumn and winter. Peanuts are the highest-energy of the three. They must go in a mesh feeder — whole peanuts can choke chicks in spring.

The obvious answer: run two

Most gardens do best with a seed feeder and one other thing. Sunflower hearts in the feeder, plus either a mix on a tray for the ground feeders or peanuts in a mesh feeder for the tits and woodpeckers, covers almost everything that visits a UK garden.

If you would rather not commit, start with the smallest pack of two different foods and see what turns up. Every food on the site comes in a 2kg or 3kg size before you step up to the bigger bags.

What about suet?

Suet is the fourth thing worth adding, and in winter it arguably beats all three. Suet pellets, blocks, fat balls and coconut halves are pure energy at the time of year birds need it most, and they bring in robins, wrens and starlings that may ignore a seed feeder entirely.