What’s on your bird feeder?

https://www.charlies.co.uk/chapel-wood-ultra-squirrel-proof-seed-feeder.html?utm_source=google_shopping&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzN-vBhAkEiwAYiO7oAAdLViu79XRAcHBHhNPhG_tsvpOcbLui5lqrrrEJJNWh3aDQH7TKhoCOu8QAvD_BwE
I can recommend one of these if you want to stop squirrels. The cage is built of thick gauge metal which they can’t chew through and it has a screw top which totally stops them from destroying it or getting at the food.They gave up after a couple of attempts. I only use sunflower hearts in it as mixed seed bits the birds don’t like just gets thrown around and attract rats which have now stopped coming. Although fox and badger in the garden at night might also help.
ive got a small ‘house’ style feeder for suet pellets but gets emptied in a couple of hours by magpies and recently starlings which not had before this year. Strangely squirrels totally ignore the suet pellets. Can’t put fat pellets out as magpies again will destroy them in quick time and peanuts just get ignored by most birds as well and go mouldy.

Well this was unexpected a couple of weekends ago! We even had Derbyshire Wildlife Trust around to see if they could film him. Sadly it appeared to be a one off visit. They think he is one of last years cubs checking out places for a new den. But great to see him in the garden nonetheless. Apparently they love peanuts from and actively forage around feeders 🤗

We had a badger pop in one evening – we get foxes all the time, and I’ve no problem being in the garden at the same time as them, but I’d have scarpered if the badger turned up while I was out there, it’s like having a mini black-and-white tank rumbling about!

Burchy1
Free Member

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

Nothing in my garden eats these, all too choosy. But the suet pellets are super popular. I get the big cardboard boxes, works out really cheap

Burchy1
Free Member

B&M bargains does a decent line in cheap fat balls.
Nothing in my garden eats these, all too choosy. But the suet pellets are super popular. I get the big cardboard boxes, works out really cheap

Yeah, I’ve bought lots of things that the birds are supposed to be really mad for, and they either ignore them and they go mouldy, or in the case of Niger seeds got tossed on the floor! I’ve emptied another tub of the mini suet pellets, the four feeders have been emptied in one day! It’s the Peckish high energy fat balls I was trying to think of, but the ones I get from Jollyes Pet Store are much the same, and they’re doing three packs for the price of one, so I’m buying a few more, to keep up with demand.
There’s going to be lots more starlings turning up in a couple of months, and possibly sparrows, they’ve been noticeably vocal recently, as well.

Then there’s the hedgehogs, I’ve got to buy another box of Pedigree dog food in the sachets, as well as a bunch of packets of Dreamies, with the creamy centres, and then there’s the 2kg bags of calci worms I buy every two weeks, because the starlings and the hedgehogs both love them. So do plenty of the other birds as well, because of what the starlings toss on the ground. 🤷🏼

Which reminds me, I’ve got to write a shopping list…

We have a pair of red cardinals here in North Georgia but our main visitors are freakin’ thieving pine siskins – seem to appear in their hundreds, scare off all the other birds and eat everything in sight 😬

mamadirt, for you

https://external-preview.redd.it/FppHSUxSPDTwVDTrdVsn-7ofQ0ZuT8YxysKMRdJEh50.jpg?auto=webp&s=e80be2e268658f204689b873e3409819566acc0c

I just binned an old maggoty box of fatballs, the birds round here simply don’t touch them. It’s about 90% sunflower hearts, and some peanuts for the tits.

Ha ha so true @Northwind

The one at work (HebTroCo) has regular visits from Blue, Great, Coal, Long Tailed tits, Nuthatch and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

Judging by the drift of pigeon feathers in the garden, I should imagine Mrs Sparrowhawk paid us a visit earlier.

 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

Ohhh would LOVE to see a lesser spotted, only ever seen Great Spotted.

Ohhh would LOVE to see a lesser spotted, only ever seen Great Spotted.

We’ve got some nesting around here. When I ride to work at the moment, I’ll hear at least 3 or 4 woodpeckers drumming, but can’t differentiate between the sounds, and I’ll occasionally see any of the different types. (I’ll also pass a couple of dozen curlew in the playing fields every few days. 😀 )

Down here in Greater Manchester we’ve got:

Goldfinch, greenfinch, siskin, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, long tailed (but they never use the feeders), dunnock, wren, robin, blackbird.

Oh and magpies nesting in the hawthorn tree.

Mainly feeding sunflower hearts and mealworm.

Hedgehog box is being emptied, but probably by the rat nesting in there.

Have a mini pond, but not seen the resident frog yet, but disappointed he’s not on the game enough to get some frogspawn going.

And here’s an old picture of said frog and a squirrel queuing to get to the pond.  Since then the log pile has completely filled this space.

In addition to the birds themselves, isnt it amazing how quickly certain species switch foods when the weather changes. 5-15 degrees and the fatballs are untouched. Bit of breeze or temps under 5 degrees and they’re going through roughly one a day.

Oh, and Mr/Mrs Sparrowhawk nearly took my head off yesterday as I was walking back down the garden to the house. Must have been 5 yards in front of me as he/she flashed across the garden. He/she has a great run out of some tall trees, across five or six narrow gardens with hedges and up into other tall trees.

And a Red Kite circling in the last few days too.

Love it.

We have a pair of red cardinals here in North Georgia but our main visitors are freakin’ thieving pine siskins – seem to appear in their hundreds, scare off all the other birds and eat everything in sight

Almost like the Starlings, except despite their best efforts, even the blue tits pretty much ignore the starlings – they just hop onto another feeder.
I think there was a Sparrowhawk in the garden briefly the other day, judging by its appearance with the long tail and rather rounded ends to the wings.
There were Peregrines around a few years back, but I haven’t seen them for a while; more likely to see ravens or red kites, remarkable considering where I live, the actual edge of town is about a kilometre away now.

Hedgehog box is being emptied, but probably by the rat nesting in there.

Their feeding station is emptied by the next morning in my garden, and I know there’s no rats about – the poos they leave behind are a good clue, mucky little wretches crap on their own food dishes! 🤨

I had yet another 2kg bag of Calciworms delivered this lunchtime, so far this year I’ve had 2kg bags delivered on 31 January, 28 February, 12 March and today, 27 March. That’s £52 so far this year. Surely it would be cheaper to have kids?
I haven’t seen the Goldcrest lately, but the fact they’ve been around for years and I hardly ever see them shows how well camouflaged they are.

One thing I’m going to get put up is a double swift box, hopefully I might encourage a couple of pairs to nest. 🤞🏼

We don’t feed birds here, but for the last few days there’s been a pair of Forest kingfishers hanging out on our pool fence. They were scooping insects out of the pool. I got my DSLR for the first time in years but the overcast weather means the photos are rubbish.

Peanut cages, as if we put out fat balls etc, theres lots of crows and magpies here and they just destroy the feeders.
They cant get to the peanuts in the cages.

We get small birds like above, sparrows, tits, wagtails etc. But a woodpecker comes every so often.

DSC00278-3 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr

DSC00268 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr

DSC00223 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr

Can’t find the picture of the woodpecker at the moment. When it’s not rats (or squirrels), we have a fabulous selection of tits and finches

*edit – found it. Not the greatest pic uploaded and then downloaded from FB and taken on the phone through glass from the bedroom

I love the Nuthatch, I think he’s probably my favourite.

I’m getting a good crop of greenfinches, goldfinches, assorted tits (blue & great, mainly) and have just recently started to see a couple of siskins. They’ve not been around for a few years, but maybe there are a few extra migrants* in the country this winter to bolster the local population.
Between them, they’re chewing through sunflower hearts at quite a rate, with blackbirds, pigeons and dunnocks on the ground below to mop up the spillage. And a field mouse a fortnight back.
Fat balls, peanuts and niger seed are pretty much being ignored in favour of the sunflower hearts, although the dried mealworms each morning soon get gobbled up.

(* I’m assuming they flew under their own steam, rather than small boats)

All of the regular bird feeders are fine for small portions.

I couldn’t find anything, large enough to hold a loaf of bread.

These are barbq accessories:

Emptied in no time at all.

i can only assume that the pigeons appreciate having croutons to dip in their cup-a-soup😂😂😂

Cock all.

When I was 14 (ahem 41 years ago), we had blue/great/coal tits, green/bull/gold/chaffinches, siskins, dunnocks, wrens, mistle/song thrushes, robins and even a blackcap once. On the same residential estate as I live now. I have two feeders and the only thing that’s been on it is a big, fat woodie. What happened?

My local ikea is selling these for £3

Check out this TOPPIG from IKEA.
Here’s a little more information:
https://ingka.page.link/qfUuwC9Ek97ny8HM7

quite easy to cram an entire loaf into it…

This is our second summer here. Last year we had a couple of sparrows and a bunch of crows, in the last few weeks I’ve lost count of the number of species of finches and tits who’ve made daily visits. Dunno if it’s our biodiversity drive in the garden, the fact we removed a fence or something to do with the weather, but I’m delighted.

First baby robin of the year today.

Already had baby blue, coal and great tits, rook, blackbirds and about 1000000 starlings.

Caught a pine marten eating sunflower hearts direct out of the feeder the other day. That was a new one on me. Have video evidence but no idea how to add that (or a photo) to a post so you can just presume I’m lying.

And to continue on that theme in rough order of frequency chaffinch, siskin, house sparrow, starling, greenfinch, sedge warbler, I could go on. A kingfisher flew through once on the way from the river to the loch that I live by. Got ospreys and eagles visible from the garden to. But not on the feeder. Seen the sparrowhawk take birds of the feeder. There’s a badger set 50 metres from the garden.

I’m tedious and straying of the topic, I am very lucky.

Oh, red squirrels come and go also. And we’ve got two male and one female Mallard in residence under the bird feeders at the moment hoovering up scraps.

I’ve finished bragging now. Sorry. We get chats also, just remembered.

Got a great spotted woodpecker with it’s young ‘un back and forwards to our fat balls and nuts. Been great watching them.

Waderider – your list is spectacular. Red squirrels are my favourite mammals in the UK.

We’ve been blessed with lots of fledglings; blue and great tits, green finches, goldfinches, lots of house sparrows, dunnocks and 2 sets of baby robins. Just waiting for the blackbirds (their nest was raided by a magpie).

Because it’s unseasonably cold the bird feeders need feeding every other day.

I wondered what the pigeon was doing hanging around in the garden, then i noticed the jackdaws raiding the feeder. I have a cage round it to stop the things but they found a way to get the nuts out. The pigeon waits underneath for the bits

And thats all

My four suet pellet feeders are being emptied by lunchtime, the coconut halves are also being emptied by the afternoon, the calciworms are all gone in an hour. It’s impossible to estimate the number of starlings now, there’s so many youngsters, I’ve got young sparrows, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, blackbirds, a robin, and the sparrows seem keen to start second broods.

I’m going to have to start a GoFundMe to pay for the food!
The food that’s being eaten in a day would have lasted nearly a week several years ago.

We’re going through 1.5kg of sultanas a day… blackbirds love them, unfortunately the 1000000 starlings have developed a taste for them too.

*sigh*, it’s bad enough that I have to hose and scrub the hedgehogs feeding station because the mucky little sods crap all over the place, now I’m having to hose starling crap off of it as well!
This is an older photo, the box has a cover over it now, but there are a lot more starlings around now and the box looks like a bird table inside. 🤨

We have a similar situation to waderider although the badgers are swapped out for tawny owls.

Currently we are inundated with siskin, very impressive. They have displaced the coal tits the live en masse in the garden

We had a total feeding hiatus over spring, nothing was interested so we took food in to save it. Last 3 weeks it’s gone mad again, possibly due to cold weather. Highlight for me was bullfinches on the flowerpots by the patio, stunning birds, plus an endless stream of goldfinch.

I have only just realized that the woodcock who over wintered with us had gone, fingers crossed he comes back in the autumn.

Swallows arrived 25 may and are constantly landing in our veg patch. I think they take wood chip from the path and use it for nest building. Such a beautiful bird up close and superb to watch as they come in through the runner bean supports and touch down

We have a fabulous robin nest under a piece of clay piping in our scruby corner, 3 chicks I think. The robin patrols along the lines of fence posts, picking grubs and insects

As usual the idiot blackbird throws his weight around trying to look hard. Nobody cares

This year the smaller birds have been making more use of the water feeding station, quite cool to watch that

quite easy to cram an entire loaf into it…

I thought bread was supposed to be bad for them?  Fills them up, but no nutritional content.  Or does that just apply to ducks?

A subtle hint, requiring that I trim off the crusts?

Dainty little fu****s!