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As its so cold our bird feeder has been seeing more birds than usual and they're being braver.
Putting out scraps (no bread) like bacon rind, left over meat, bits of cheese is ideal.
Also peanuts. sunflower hearts in a feeder are best, fat balls (take out of the netting though).
All these need to be near cover, so cats or sparrow hawks have less chance of catching them.
Also any bird baths need fresh water.
But if you go around handing them food on a plate aren't you just encouraging them to breed ?
Why no bread?
Yes I am cranberry.
Bread doesn't hold much nutrients or energy for a bird, nor do oats, which cheap bird feed bags seem to contain.
If I put food out I'll end up with hundreds of massive sea gulls in my garden 🙁
It's the middle sized birds I feel sorry for. They're really feeling the squeeze and won't breed as much now there's less food about.
[i]Also any bird baths need fresh water. [/i]
Won't the water freeze?
Use feeders if you can. We have a bird table which would be hard for a large pigeon or gull to get onto.
Its quite exciting when birds like goldfinches or the odd woodpecker arrives out of nowhere and become regular visitors
If you feed them you'll never encourage them to go out and get a job.
Guys - I'm not David Attenborough you know. Just a keen amateur wildlife lover.
What about sunflower seeds?
Are they the fatty equivalent of doing fast food?
I have been filling my two feeders up every other day
i love seeing the birds feed in the garden and so does my 2yr old 😀
Yep - its great for the children. My nephew used to shout ' look auntie a gold tit'.
We have all just had a letter off the managing agents saying not to feed the birds, it appears the resident grumpy has complained again about something minor, and it gets blown out of all proportion.
Oh and when i used to visit a mate in chester a neighbour decided i shouldnt park where i was parked, so one day i came out the car was covered in birds, it appears the bird loving old git had threw bread and seeds over any car that parked below his window.
Have you seen the price you pay for bird tables!
That's peed me off big time!
I have some spare wood & some spare time this weekend, pics to follow 😉
Don't expect anything fancy mind.
Apologies to the mods, but the above was not intended to offend anyone.
We always feed the birds. We save the fat from any cooking and mix it with seeds in a coconut shell and have a nut feeder as well. They tend to get cake and bread crumbs too, it's better than throwing them away. We have a good community of birds, finches, tits, sparrows, robins etc and I know there's a thrush becasue I see the broken snail shells sometimes. I love the birds, they have it tough, so feeding them is cool I reckon. 🙂
Because birds have never managed to find their own food in the last thousand years. It's a good job we are all going to feed them before they get wiped out
So I take it, sun flower seeds are ok?
We got a buck load of seeds that the kids collected from some sunflowers they grew in the garden this year 😉
It is a sad fact but some bird species are indeed being wiped out.
Sparrows, starlings, and now green finches are well down on numbers. These are all birds that wouldn't be seen again if not for thousands of people feeding them.
If you haven't got a garden go to the local park, within a couple of minutes a robin will be following you, if there's food about.
s - yep sunflower seeds are perfect. The hearts are even better, however it would take ages to peel off the husk.
Looking forward to seeing the bird table.
Man with wood and tools in the great outdoors always seems a happy man.
Oh that reminds me I have a Ham bone to hang out. Poor birds were trying to get insects from my pebble dash this am.
Any suggestions on what bird food doesn't attract rats
I put ground food out (on a dangly tray thing), sunflower seeds in a feeder, water, and peanuts in two other feeders. We have a thriving colony of sparrows (50+) great tits, blue tits, willow tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, dunnocks, greater spoted woodpecker, green woodpeckers, collared doves, stock doves, woodies (yuk), blackbirds, robin(s) thrushes, wrens, the occasional starling, crow, pheasant, red legged partridge, field fare, moorhen, mistle thrush, gold finches but very few greenfinches any more. To top all this off, we have a semi resident sparrow hawk who uses our garden like a sushi bar.
When I have clients round to discuss business, they spend more time watching the birds that listening to me!
The reason we need to feed birds now is that we have destroyed a lot of their habitat.
Don't put your food on the floor and rats won't get it. Hang it from trees.
Mrs R puts out fat-balls which seem to be much liked by the sparrows and finches although I worry that it's the bird equivalent of giving them a McDonalds.
sparrow hawks have less chance of catching them
There was a sparrow hawk snacking on a sparrow under our birdtable the other day, which I thought was fair enough as they need winter food too. 🙂
mmm I've got a fair bit of wood kicking about sounds like a project for the weekend.
Any tips on how big / small they should be and how high off the ground etc..
There's a sparrowhawk at my inlaws that's developed the knack of ambushing birds from under the bird table. It hides in the bushes at ground level then launches itself upwards. Seems to be pretty successful, I think prey birds are programmed to look out for danger from above and so miss the danger from below. Also likes to do flybys on the trees they roost in!
Surely they should at a level that is ideal for cats, therefore providing an ideal chance for a bit if target practice on the lurking cat.
The birds around here go bonkers for sun flower hearts. We've been getting around 20 visits a minute on the feeder. We use fat balls too but they only eat off them if the sunflower feeder is empty.
Picked up a long tail tIt off the road today. Luckily after a bit of warming in my jacket it flew off happy as larry. 😀
Mmmmmmm... fat balls.... mmm
Because birds have never managed to find their own food in the last thousand years. It's a good job we are all going to feed them before they get wiped out
Some one always comes out with this bollocks.
We didn't have large scale industrial farming of homogenised crops, pesticide use, and the widespread destruction of hedgerows a thousand years ago!
Most wild bird numbers [u]are[/u] measurably declining.
I'm quite happy to feed the birds.
Our cat is also quite happy if we feed the birds as he then brings the birds in. In bits
put anti freeze in the water.. oh ..
Putting a ping pong ball or something in the water (that will move with the wind), helps to keep it ice free.
We feed the birds with fat balls, peanuts and seeds.
I also think that I have finally won the war against the grey squirrels that used to invade our garden and steal the birds' food 🙂
If you really want to treat the birds try mealworms. Protein rich.
Sat working today out of our living room window I've seen nuthatches, a variety of t1ts, sparrows, finches and a dirty great jay all on and around our feeder. It's hung next to a hedge of firs and we sometimes get goldcrests nesting in them - this time of year they're alive with spiders which the nuthatches go crazy for too. My two daughters love it as it's all about 3 or 4 foot from the window so no need for binoculars.
We're also currently being visited by a barn owl that sits on an ash tree about 10 foot from our bedroom window and wakes my wife up (I'm usually on my way to work before it starts up).
Because birds have never managed to find their own food in the last thousand years.
Yeah.............too damn right.
And the last thing I want to encourage into my garden is the scrounging spindly-legged ****ers.
As it is, the thieving little bashtards come stealing all the twigs from my garden every Spring for their so-called nests.
What we need is a bit of Darwinian selection to sort the ****ers out, not bleeding-heart do-gooders with their no regards for the private and personal property of hard-working folk 😐
[i]I also think that I have finally won the war against the grey squirrels that used to invade our garden and steal the birds' food [/i]
Don't talk to me about the Grey Squirrels, Mrs J thinks they're soo cute!! 😈
We have a pond with a little fountain in it that prevents it freezing over. We sometimes get a queue of birds perching on the garage gutter as they take it in turns to drink.
Funniest thing is watching the big fat woodies walk over the ice towards the fountain and then the ice breaks beneath them. They are not harmed but sit on the edge of the pond fluffing their feathers and looking most indignant.
If you don't want a bird table but do have a tree you can rub fat and seeds into the rough bark and the birds will feed from that. Great for tree creepers and wood peckers especially.
We've had several feeders hanging inside an Acer Palmatum which the birds really like, as they feel protected, even with the leaves off. They really go for the sunflower hearts, especially the Goldfinches, which seem to have had a pretty good breeding year, there's often twenty or more out on the feeders now. There's often several bluetits and greattits as well as a regular family of sparrows, and a couple of Greenfinches. A couple of robins and blackbirds, and a small number of Starlings come along too. Oddly, I tried some large fatballs last year and the birds ignored them, and I tried stringing peanuts this year and those got ignored as well, but small fatballs in a feeder are proving popular, and fat filled coconut shells are popular as well. The ground under the tree usually has a carpet of sunflower seed bits, which the blackbirds, pigeons and goldfinches go for, and the hedgehogs take advantage of too.
woffle
We're also currently being visited by a barn owl that sits on an ash tree about 10 foot from our bedroom
That's so exciting. One of my favourite birds.
The local tawny owl who's very vocal at the moment, is the nearest thing here.
That's so exciting. One of my favourite birds.The local tawny owl who's very vocal at the moment, is the nearest thing here.
It scares me half to death some mornings as it likes to fly ahead of me for 200-300 yards in the dark down the hill - I'll be bombing along and all of a sudden there's this ghostly bird silently flying in front of me. I'm a very, very lucky boy to live where i do sometimes...
one these in your garden, coupled with a trip as required to the local rehoming charity will help as well
Because birds have never managed to find their own food in the last thousand years. It's a good job we are all going to feed them before they get wiped out
Slightly different landscape, human population and impact on the countryside than even 50 years ago - use your nut.
However I disagree with discouraging sparrowhawks etc, all birds need to eat and sparrowhawks dont go around ruthlessly hoovering up birds, they take what they need to survive, usually the slowest.