i do have to chuckle at work sometimes. I am a jobbing gardener and spend a lot of time gardening on a retirement village for the residents. Many of the residents feed the birds, honestly, I think they spend more on bird feed than they spend on their own food. Several of the residents exclaim that hey have no idea where the weeds come from around their bird tables, others have me sowing wild flower seeds, then weeding them out as weeds. I do explain that the uneaten bird feed germinates and grows, and I do point out that a lot of the weeds are lovely wild flowers but I honestly don't think they believe me.
I see the same thing here EJ ... people don't seem to understand that seeds (including bird seed) will actually GROW!
I like having sunflowers show up under the feeder but the safflowers are an ugly plant. I could carpet the world with the millet growing there. I guess I could be included in the list of unaware feeders of birds, a couple of years ago I bought bags of raw peanuts for the squirrels and BlueJays......never even dawned on me that the dropped ones and squirrel planted ones would germinate and become sorta pretty little plants.
