Lena, good comment about the bird trims. Mostly what I am putting out are slivers from my method of cut large and trim down, so are very skinny (starting under 1/4") and usually less than 6 inches, often with a seam held by half a stitch... When I had longer pieces I would cut them down smaller. In Seattle I tried various things like putting them inside of the suet feeders, or loose on the evergreen branches, or many other ways and locations, with never a taker until I took off the bits looking like moldy tinsel.
We do have tons of squirrels out back, it could be them that took the bits. I do my best quilting and work in general in the mornings so that was usually when I would be able to see the critters. Now we have some wildlife cameras so maybe next spring I'll see more.
I use neutral soaps and no dryer sheets and typically let the trimmings air out a bit with limited contact to human type stuff. I'll have to go back and try and figure things out, but I think I started putting them out in March?? but not much action until like April/May. There were quite a few early trims that I had to clean up.