For several years I have been feeding birds with sunflowers hearts, they are popular with most birds (sparrows, goldfinches, greenfinches, siskins, chaffinches & pigeons) but I noticed the sunflower hearts were creating a lot of mess from wastage. About 6 months ago I noticed sunflower heart chips for sale and decided to try switching to see if they created less mess.
As I had some of each bird food, I decided to do a test comparing Sunflower Hearts vs Sunflower Heart Chips.
Almost immediately I noticed there was indeed less wastage and less mess under the bird feeders. The birds also seemed just as happy with the sunflower heart chips.
Both sunflower hearts and sunflower heart chips cost the same price, about £20 for 12.5kgs. I order them in bulk from sellers on Amazon. The birds eat an entire bag per month, on average.
Whole sunflower hearts have to be chewed by the birds and they tend to drop a fair bit of them whereas the sunflower chips are already broken down for them meaning they drop far less of them. They have the same nutritional value and the birds are quite happy with either type of food.
If you are having issues with mess under your bird feeders then I would try feeding them sunflower heart chips instead and see how you get on.
I use Leagrams Sunflower Heart Chips, although they also sell Sunflower Hearts too. As I mentioned, the prices are pretty much identical although they do vary from month to month.
Happy bird feeding!