A query for the bird watchers among us.

Put a bird feeder in the garden in the Winter.

At first I got a lot of chaffinches, blue tits, robins and the other more colourful British birds.

Since then I have added a couple more feeders and changed to the seed to something a little more expensive and apparently better quality.

Now I get very large numbers of sparrows but very few other species.

Have the sparrows bullied the other birds away? Now I like sparrows as much as the next man but would like a bit more variety. Is it possibly the change of feed?

Depends on what you put out.
I have a couple of feeders, one a thistle (nyger) seed feeder. Only attracts finches, mostly goldies which are well worth having, but occasional greenies. they don’t touch anything else, nothing else touches the thistle seed. maybe your older seed mix had thistle seed and now it doesn’t. Anyway, try thistle seed – dedicated feeder needed.

Might be just a seasonal thing. So long with long tailed tits I hardly see them at all during summer, but come winter they’ll be all over the feeders again.
Robin’s tend to hide a lot in summer as they moult and don’t want to be seen in public unless they are blinged up.

You might find you get less visitors in the summer due to greater availability of natural food.

(House) Sparrows tend to live around people though, so they will always be around. That said, they can be bullies.

Edit: what he said ^^^

Same here – millions of sparrows, the odd robin, thrush, blackbird or tit but nowt else.

We put thistle seed in a standard type feeder and one of those platic bottle feeders and haven’t had much success.
The feed disappears, but it’s the bloody pigeons that are taking it as far as I can tell.

Didn’t know you needed a dedicated feeder. 😐
Ah well, off to the garden centre again then.

If you started feeding in winter then more birds venture into the garden because of a lack of alternative (easy) food sources. My guess is, now that the grain is being harvested there is no need for the seed eaters to come into your garden. Once you get into October and the weather changes they’ll be back.

As above, the goldfinches love niger seed, and thistles and dandelions. In our experience, greenfinches and tits like sunflower seeds. Sparrows will eat any cheap seed. Robins prefer fat balls, particularly the gooey ‘cakes’ from Wilkos, but the starlings tend to get there first. But at the moment, we have very few visitors, just the blackbirds and starlings after the elderberries and blackberries.

we get loads of greenfinches and gold finches, have had bull finches, also get blue tits, great tits and some coal tits – and a sparrowhawk who comes hunting from time to time. We use sunflower hearts, nothing else. Very rarely see sparrows on the feeder, though they;re bobbing about the garden

We had siskins and golds last summer, and a few greats and blues over winter. And a noisy rabble of about 30 sparrows. Slowly but surely, the finches and tits have just disappeared, despite a range of food being left. I do sort of hold the theory that the sparrows are taking over. The RSPB has them on a red status, sop I guess I don’t mind that much 🙄