Peanut eats reasonably well. He's not too interested in vegetables, fruit, or healthy people food. When I offer him something new, he usually tastes once, and then ignores it for the rest of his life. Most of the time things like broccoli or peas become toys: he tosses them out of his food dish to get to other things. Bread gets quickly turned into crumbs — I used to make him pancakes with hulled millet inside, so he's really just looking for tasty seeds. He does eat corn, but lately he just wants the tiny little heart that's inside the kernel. He likes it when I squish the individual kernels so he can get to that bit more easily. Frankly, I don't have a whole lot of patience for this (...which is a little surprising, considering all the other things I do for him). His diet consists of about equal parts crumbles, seed balls, and other stuff.

• Crumbles: Pellets are the dried dog food of the bird world, designed to be the perfect food for your pet bird. Being small, Peanut eats the "crumble" size. He has always enjoyed the Roudybush brand. Once I tried him on an organic brand, but he didn't like it. Roudybush has both low-fat and regular versions available, currently I'm mixing them half and half. Crumbles are always available in Peanut's house, plus they'll be available on the play gym I'm building (if I ever get around to finishing it). I discovered awhile ago that crumbles actually taste better from a spoon, but you can see from the photo that they taste the best straight from the jar. Click here to see a bigger picture of Peanut eating crumbles from a jar.
• Seed Balls: Lafeber's Nutri-Berries are tasty seeds and things, coated with vitamins and minerals, and rolled into balls. They are also designed to be the perfect food for you bird. Peanut gets the cockatiel size, but since he's about a third the size of a cockatiel, I have to hold the ball for him to eat. This is a nice bonding experience that I read about when I first got him, although I never dreamed that Peanut would train me to do this twice a day.
• Other stuff: He gets about 1/4 of a teaspoon of soft wheat berries (grains) (soaked in water for 24 hours) every day. He also gets...a lot...of oat groats every day. These are toys, as much as snacks. He also gets some sunflower seeds every day. Since these are very high in fat, he probably shouldn't get as many as I actually give him. We're trying to cut down.
• Other other stuff: Every other day, both Peanut and the Finsters get some soaked seeds. The seeds are a nice finch mix that I soak for about 36 hours. Soaking the seeds until they just start to get roots increases the nutritional value dramatically — but don't soak them any longer. (Michael Marcotrigiano has a good fact sheet about sprouting seeds, as does Carol Heesen.) Peanut also gets a daily assortment of vegetables, parsley, and other tasty things that he can toss out of his food dish.