I haven’t had one bird eat from the bark & bark butter I bought. I’ve tried hanging it in two places. I mostly put out the pepper bark butter, but I’ve tried both flavors. Maybe I should try less of the pepper flavored & more of the other. I just don’t know.
If it's a new thing in the yard it can often take a while before birds become regular consumers. How long has it been? Where (approximately) are you? What kind of feeder(s) do you have? Are there other active feeders in the yard? These are just a few starter questions. If you'd like, we could do a phone consultation complete with a look at your property using GoogleEarth. If you're local, we even have a "feederscaping" service. If you're not local to us then you might have a WBU nearby that would do the same thing. Either way, take heart in your failure to attract birds with Bark Butter. It's my number one most popular food but my neighbor, whose feeders I can see from my kitchen window, gave me all of his Bark Butter and swore it off forever. You can see from the video evidence and the length of the bird list that WBU keeps, Bark Butter is the real deal. It's just something we have to work through given the particulars of your yard.
It can be a long haul. This summer was unusual in that so many people had pileated activity at feeders. I hope Bark Butter will do this over the longer term.
I have seen 4 Pileated woodpeckers this year and have heard countless more, but I haven't gotten any of them to visit my feeder. Got any tips? I have suet, and a small platform for birds that don't like hanging feeders.
Prior to this past summer, I had only known of a few dozen cases of Pileateds as feeder birds in this area over the course of many years. Almost every one of them was coming to suet, usually a pressed mo-melt cake in a tail prop style feeder. Since the advent of Bark Butter and feeders like the one in the video and social media pulling so many people with stories out of the woodwork, I'd say that the combination you see above is the way to go. Other people are reporting PIWOs at seed feeders when they can eat peanuts or tree nuts but, again, spreadable suet and log-style feeders are the way to go. Even with the apparent increase in feeder visits, PIWOs are still uncommon at feeders at best. Stick with it and at least you should build activity up among other species and then, hopefully, one day, your PIWO activity will start.
I have no idea about that area although we do have a few SEFL customers who call and mail order from us. We're about to launch a brand new e-commerce site. Should be a month or two and you'll be able to shop much of what we have in the store at least in terms of core feeding and hardware merchandise.
