What’s on your bird feeder?

Have dug our old compact camera out and am amazed how much better it is than the one on my phone.

Therefore I can show you our new regular visitors , goldfinches.
The parakeets normally scare them off though.
Apologies for state of garden,bins etc.

Rats mostly, so had to stop feeding the birds for a while

Nothing at the moment. Went away for a few days and a particularly persistent squirrel has destroyed them.

Tits

Out bird feeders need to be very squirrel proof which also means they are only for small birds as the big birds cannot fit through the gaps to get to the food.

We had some pigeons that discovered that if they tried to balance on the feeders they would fall off which looked amusing but also spilled some of the feed so they would eat it from the ground where it landed.

We then had some magpies watching this and the clever buggers started simply crashing into the feeders enough to knock the food out and eating it from the ground.

Once the magpies discovered this trick, 3 of them completely emptied the feeder in about 20 minutes. When I refilled it the next day, 4 magpies and 10 minutes removed all to feed. Not sure what to do now.

We’ve had Redpolls and Siskins back this year after a gap of a year.

It is incredible how much nature is still out there despite the incessant kicking we give it.

Incredible but not indestructible.

Goldfinches, Starlings, House Sparrows, Jackdaws, Feral Pigeons, Wood Pigeons, Collared doves, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Long Tailed Tits, Coal Tits, Robins (nest in the garden), sometimes we get Ringneck Parrakettes, very occasionally a Great Spotted Woodpecker, Bull Finch, and Chaffinch.

We always have grey squirels.

We get nuthatch, greenfinch, robins, and spotted woodpeckers, as well as loads of bluetits, great tits, and some others we think are coal tits or marsh tits.

Magpies occasionally try their luck but don’t persist very long. We’ve got a baffle on the pole and the squirrels learned fairly quickly not to bother trying, after a week or so of amusing failures.

Bit of a mixed bag – mainly the world’s most aggressive robin and a collection of blue/great tits, but we’ve had goldfinches, chaffinches, a nuthatch and wrens.

Once had a jay in the garden but not on the feeder, and last year we had a pair of buzzards on the street.

Bluetits and the odd robin. Plus some pigeons on the grass below picking up the leftovers.

Siskins, goldfinches, chaffinches, tits, robins and an occasional woodpecker

Double post

Double post

Not especially rare around these parts

House Sparrows, occasional Dunnock, jackdaws and one MASSIVE rook that comes down like an angel of death and trashes everything for a while.

And two rats that are incredibly cute and a long way from the house. How they escape from all the local cats is a mystery.

Plenty of the usual here. Maybe siskins the most exciting. Flock of waxwings sometimes comes by but they are more interested in the rowan berries than the feeder.

Used to have rats but have fixed a plant pot drip tray under the seed feeder which catches the spillage. Still some rats around probably (well, definitely, I found a dead one last year) but not so obvious.

For those struggling with squirrels and rats trashing everything, this has been very effective for the last three months.

Basically a wooden beam with short lengths of plastic pipe that spin. The squirrel has tried to walk on it once and ended up in an angry heap. The plastic squirrel baffle dome stops any jump attempts and also spins, so we can then use normal feeders that woodpecker, collared dove and jackdaw etc can use.

Squirrel still visits but grabs a few bits off the floor and then grumpily runs around the fence and tree before leaving in disgust 🙂

and some others we think are coal tits or marsh tits.

@MrSalmon
Coal tits are quite easy to identify – little white spot or patch on the back of their neck. They also generally dash in, grab a seed, and leg it (well, wing it) pdfq. They dont hang around much.
Even the experts have problems distinguishing between marsh and willow tits, and since those are both pretty uncommon these days, its a fair bet you’re seeing the coal tit.

I keep trying but give up around three months in every time.

Huge wood pigeons that paint everything in a thick layer of guano. They pick through anything the legions of herring gulls leave behind.

Nothing else gets a look in. I’m going to get the useless Eucalyptus tree cut down  so the bastards have less places to stand on watch for me to try and feed the little birds.

We’ve got a baffle on the pole and the squirrels learned fairly quickly not to bother trying, after a week or so of amusing failures.

Due to the mk1 fido in the house and the feeder being a long way from any safe cover we don’t have a squirrel problem.

Currently the finches, tits and robins are eating the yellowy fat balls, peanuts and niger seeds. (The robin seed feeder with added meal worms is of no interest and neither are the sunflower hearts).

Birds. That’s about the extent of my knowledge.

No squirrels, but I’ve had to put a wire tray underneath because they were picking out the seeds they didn’t like and throwing them on the floor which led to a slug problem.

Sparrows – lots of sparrows – a variety of tits, robins, blackbirds, starlings. Pigeons have worn the ground bare under the feeders, squirrels will occassionally try and pry the wire apart on the nut feeder, magpies and pigeons will occassionally try (and fail) to get at the mealworm – I put a dish on a table under a cage, blackbirds and starlings can get through, but nothing bigger. Finches sadly very rare visitors, get the odd jay, woodpecker (for the grubs in the bee boclxes, dammit) and sparrowhawk popping by.

sparrowhawk popping by

This has started to appear. Probably to eat the birds I posted above

Nothing! Stopped feeding months ago as rats underneath a constant problem despite the best efforts of my terriers. Lots of birds in the rest of the garden though feeding in the woodland and on the seed heads left from last year’s flowers. I’ve not seen a reduction in numbers or variety since stopping feed, have to look and listen more and just more widespread. Tits – Blue, Great, Longtailed, coal, willow. Lots of goldfinches, green, bull, chaffinch. Gold or fire crests, sparrows, robins, blackbird, thrushes – song and mistle, wrens, buzzard, tawny owls, sparrowhawk, jackdaw, wood pigeon, magpie. Chiff Chaff arrived the other day so hoping for willow warbler soon. I also use the free “Merlin” app to check what’s about, it was a revelation last year to identify birds just passing through!

Currently the finches, tits and robins are eating the yellowy fat balls, peanuts and niger seeds. (The robin seed feeder with added meal worms is of no interest and neither are the sunflower hearts).

Fussy buggers aren’t they? We find the opposite – fat balls get basically zero interest, but they all love the sunflower hearts, with peanuts a distant second.

@thelawman – good tip, thanks. Will pay more attention to the neck.

In rough order of frequency on the feeders

Coal tits
Blue tits
Goldfinches
H Sparrows
Siskins
Dunnocks
Greenfinches
Chaffinches
Robins
Starlings
Long-tailed tits
Magpies
Nuthatches
Great spotted woodpecker

Very fussy indeed – I gave up on peanuts and niger seed, they won’t touch fat balls but love fat blocks(?!), demolish sunflower hearts and will do mixed seeds if pushed.

just the usual, jel of people sprawks, wish they’d eat my birds

Very nice collection of photos’ and birds.  Here, not too exotic – great, blue, coal tits, blackbirds, occasional fieldfare, house and tree sparrows, chaffinch, greenfinch and once or twice gold finches.

Could see a sea eagle early this morning out of the bedroom window tho’ and a heron.

I’ve stopped feeding this week.  First greenery coming through

Fussy buggers aren’t they?

You’re not wong, the fat balls are from Peckish currently £4 for 12 at Waitrose (my birds are reet posh). Last year sunflower hearts were going faster than I could keep up and the peanuts were going off if not changed regularly.

We also have a resident Sparrowhawk / F15.

I’ve seen it a couple of times this winter – ‘see’ in the loosest sense – just a flash and gone.

This BBC short film is one of the best things on YouTube IMO.

^^^ though ambush is probably the preferred method for sparrowhawks I watched one hunt like a terrier with a rat trapped but couldn’t quite get at… this was a greenfinch in some dense garden undergrowth. He was one side to the other trying to flush it out. the finch escaped in the end.

Regular visitors are:

Blackbirds

Tits – Long tailed (occasionally)/Blue/Great/Coal/Marsh

Goldfinches

Sparrows

Robin

Crows

Magpies

Starlings, lots of starlings! Roughly 1/3 of the main flock at a time – there just aren’t enough feeders to accommodate 150-odd birds at one go, and I reckon there’s 40-50 descend on the tree at a time, noisy quarrelsome little wretches that they are! Come the warmer weather, and I have my bedroom window open, I have to wear earplugs to avoid being woken up at 5.30 in the morning. 😖

I have in the past seen Goldcrests, and I’m sure I hear them around, but they’re so small and well camouflaged it’s difficult to see them once the tree’s in leaf. The magpies have learned how to perch on the feeders, the blackbird has sussed out that one of the fat-filled half-coconut shells is hanging at exactly the right height and distance from the adjacent branch that he can stand and peck away for absolutely ages.
Here’s one of the brighter coloured visitors:

And here’s one of the crows breaking off twigs from my silver birch for nesting material…

Mostly starlings, but I love starlings so that’s fine. And they’ve created a weird little cooperative ecosystem- they drop loads of food, which the blackbirds and fat pigeons hoover up, and the coal tits and sparrows use them as early warning. Even the crows cohabit, I guess when there’s easy food there’s no point in hassling small birds.

Do wish I had a bit more variety but this is a very birdfeedy sort of area, I think a lot of the more middle class birds reject my B&M Bargains birdfood.

Back garden we seem to have the world’s population of sparrows, some tree sparrows ,robin, black bird, plus blue and great tits, chaffinch, the odd yellow hammer and grey and red legged partridge (on the floor!). Had a sparrow hawk too.

Front feeder across the track,blue/great/long tailed tits, chaffinch, robin, tree creeper, but best off all we’ve had a greater spotted woodpecker daily for a while now.

Also a pesky pheasant has started to wait on our doorstep for me to come out and feed the birds 🤣. It’s actually followed me about when I went for a walk too!

Our bird feeders are super popular with our guests….and the birds too!

Only snag is the rats are not so much! Cheeky buggers set up a nest directly below the feeder. You can buy feeders advertised as anti-rat with collectors or I’ll try and fashion up something myself.

We have fat balls in a feeder front and back, but only put out seed mix on a morning to minimise rat issues, as we live in a house on a farm they’ll always be about, but I think it does help minimise them in the garden.

The pigeons and squirrels soon hoover up any crumbs we have.

The demise of Wilko has seen my spend on bird food diminish significantly, but I think the birds miss their super tasty suet pellets.

This somewhat forced reduction in the availability of decent bird food has led me to refine what I put out as it was getting a bit daft, with around seven feeders of various styles and fillings to manage.  T’was very annoying to then see the local squirrel just have a go at everything.

Currently offering mainly sunflower hearts but I have a narrow range of diners.  We did go through a spell of loads of Goldfinch on a Niger feeder but they seem to have disappeared.

I was considering getting one of those Roamwild feeders which are supposed to be go for songbirds.  Just using that and filling with sunflower hearts.

https://roamwildproducts.com/pages/pestoff-2-0

The demise of Wilko has seen my spend on bird food diminish significantly, but I think the birds miss their super tasty suet pellets.

B&M bargains does a decent line in cheap fat balls.

We get Long Tail tits, Dunnocks, Sparrows, Great/Coal/Blue Tits, Robin, Blackbird, a pair of Jays (although they are only in for the red berries in the tree next to the feeder), very occasional Goldfinches and the Sparrow Hawk.

I buy the large tubs of suet pellets from B&M, judging by how quickly the four feeders full of pellets empty, they seem to like them, same as the half coconut shells full of fat 🥥 . Fat balls are a bit of an issue, in that the regular ones, the pale cream ones, just get ignored, B&M used to do some much darker greyish ones with black sunflower seeds in which I can’t find at the moment, but there’s a pet supply place called Jolley’s, or Jollies, not sure which, who sell similar ones and the birds go through those pretty quickly, in fact the feeder’s nearly empty, so I’ll fill it up later.

The four feeders full of suet pellets, which I filled up yesterday evening are all now half empty! Again. That’s every other day I’m filling them up.

To my astonishment, having mentioned them in my previous post, I noticed something flitting around in my Acer and into the Cedar hedge next to it, and it’s a Goldcrest! It was on the fatball feeder, then fossicking around on the tree branches, then it flew across to the conifers next door, so I reckon they’re nesting and picking the moss and lichen off my tree. 😁

Not very good photos, they’re very small birds and I’ve only got my phone, but I’ve cropped them and you can just about make out the yellow stripe, it’s on the end of the branch below the mesh feeder and level with the longer plastic feeder in the top photo.

I’m just really chuffed and excited to see they’re still around, not a common garden bird in these parts. Just checked on my bird app, their lifespan is about two years, maximum a bit over four, and I’ve seen them around for somewhere over twelve years or more, so they’re clearly happy with this location.