T

I'm curious why the size of seed is important. I just planted some sunflower seeds that I purchased online, and they were much smaller than your typical black oil bird seed types. Why are you looking for the "smallest"?

Martha

We've these cute little birds, apparently 'Lesser goldfinch' Spinus sensu stricto, that likes to sit on the sunflower blossoms and peck away at the seed. We were just curious, would they prefer even smaller seed?

Smaller seed is not necessary.

I agree with Rhizo. Seed eating birds are capable of cracking seeds with their beaks. In my opinion it would be difficult to find a sunflower with seeds too large for the bird. And there are some sunflowers with seeds in the one-inch-long category and larger.

We are only seeing two of the tiny birds this year. Usually there are at least six or eight.

Anyway the feed around the smallest sunflower, 100mm with 25mm centers. They rarely hang out on the larger ones. Perhaps because the cannot weight the larger ones down and cling upside down to do their fascinating little feeding bit.

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ETA Not my picture. They won't stay sill long enough for me get a photo. But I see a lot of this:

As docmom above suggested we got some thistle seed and the number of lessor goldfinch at our feeder went from two to about 25 within a day or so.

Smallest seed I can think of belongs to my favorite, Helianthus debilis, Italian White. It's a really tall, graceful, and branching pale yellow. It goes really well with Zinnia, Polar Bear. The links have where to get seed. Both are incredibly easy to grow from seed. ETA: and it was covered in gold finches. I forgot to say that! They also really love zinnia seeds.