One question I'm often asked this time of year is, "What will my birds do when I'm on vacation?" Well, your birds will probably be fine, but if you want to provide them with a steady supply of food and keep them coming, try using seed cylinders and blocks. Seed cylinders are my absolute favorite way to feed the birds. They are clean, easy to use, last a long time, and a wide variety of birds love them. These compressed blocks and cylinders of seed often come loaded with nuts and fruit and are held together with gelatin.

Not only do they attract the usual seed eating suspects like house finches, chickadees, jays and thrashers, but because they contain nuts and gelatin, they also bring suet eaters such as ladder-backed woodpeckers, bushtits and flickers up close. I've even seen white-breasted nuthatches, pine siskins and a robin eating from my seed cylinders. I think the robin must have been after the cranberries.

Summertime is an especially great time to use seed cylinders. They last forever ... at least one or two weeks feels like forever when you're used to filling a feeder every day. So, they are handy to put out for your birds when you're away or just feeling lazy.

We sometimes call our large cylinders "vacation blocks." I always have several large cylinders hanging throughout my yard whether I'm home or away so when my loose seed feeders are empty (which I must admit, is often), my birds always have food, and I always have birds to watch.

Seed cylinders and blocks are also a clean way to feed the birds, which most of us appreciate this time of year. You'll have a few shells on the ground but not nearly the mess you have with most loose seed blends.

One easy-to-remember rule of thumb when buying a seed block or cylinder: Your block should be mostly black, not yellow. Good-quality seed blocks are loaded with black-oil sunflower, nuts and sometimes fruit.

If your seed block has a lot of millet or filler seed like milo you'll pay less but it won't attract as wide a variety of birds, and much of it will go uneaten.

Hang your seed cylinder in or near a tree so birds find it and use it faster. Birds find food by sight, and because these look a little different, it might take your birds a while to stumble upon them ... but once they do, they'll keep coming, and might even bring their babies.
As with all feeders, hang your seed cylinder near a window for close-up viewing — your birds won't mind and you'll have a lot more to see.

Anne Schmauss is the co-owner of the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Santa Fe and the co-author of the 2008 book For the Birds: A Month by Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard. She is also a regular contributor to Birder's World magazine.