Please DON'T STOP FEEDING THE BIRDS in your garden.

[Zak33]

Lo people

If you were feeding the birds in your garden all spring and summer long, PLEASE DONT STOP.

Little "squadrons!" of sparrows and blackbirds/thrush's begin to rely upon that food source, and if you stop now, you'll lose them all... this winter is HARD on little birds.

Make sure those nut feeders are full, put your apple and pear cores out for them, and when it all snows over, put a little piece of board ontop of the snow and put some fruit on that.

In spring you'll be greatful. Then you can begin to whittle down their food supply so that they begin to disperse and find new haunts, and control their popuation size... but right now... IF you started feeding them, PLEASE CARRY ON, even if it means getting cold every day refilling the feeder.

I know bird food is expensive too....a large bag of nuts is upwards of £20 but it'll last all winter long...

message ends

[Flibb]

Dont forget they need water as well. We have a local farmers merchant thats cheaper than other places.

[SuicidaL]

the feeders in the garden are full, but not been touched for the last week or so

[roorooroo]

The bags of nuts i feed our garden birds last about a week..greedy tits that they are
Plenty of bread this week is their treat..

[blueball]

Bread isn't much use for birds in winter, its mainly air. Better with fatty foods.
If you do want to use bread you can always use it to soak up fat from a roasting dish or frying pan and then put the fatty bread out - much better nourishment for them.

[666moe666]

This may be considered unrelated but is white bread bad for ducks??

I went down to a fairly local pond with a full loaf, which I just bought, as I thought it would be a nice treat for them. I pretty much got chased out of the area by a pensioner saying I should have bought brown instead...

[dbh]

This may be considered unrelated but is white bread bad for ducks??

I went down to a fairly local pond with a full loaf, which I just bought, as I thought it would be a nice treat for them. I pretty much got chased out of the area by a pensioner saying I should have bought brown instead...

Maybe it was the OAP who didn't like the taste of the white bread me thinks?

[Lucio]

I can't feed the local birds, too many cats figured out that if they wait near the food then they can get a new toy

[Kumagoro]

Where i use to live we had loads of birds all year round. I moved about a mile a way and now we
get close to nothing. A couple of wood pigeons seagulls and starlings. I have seen blue tits twice
and a goldfinch once. What is strange i find is the lack of blackbirds.. they are normally everywhere.

If you want to get goldfinches blue tits greenfinches etc put out sun flower hearts they love
them and starlings wont touch them and sparrows dont particularly like them either.

[Zak33]

This may be considered unrelated but is white bread bad for ducks??

I went down to a fairly local pond with a full loaf, which I just bought, as I thought it would be a nice treat for them. I pretty much got chased out of the area by a pensioner saying I should have bought brown instead...

there's a lot of stats towards white bread swelling up in ducks/swans stomachs and causing issues with digestie systems.

But lots of ducks seem to have become accustomed to it on the other hand.

Brown... white... I don't think the bread's a very natural diet anyway.. BUT brown is allegedyl better for a human so maybe same for ducks.

[Zak33]

I can't feed the local birds, too many cats figured out that if they wait near the food then they can get a new toy

my cat used to too... but there are so many.. the target rich enviroment seems to confuse him



besides... the local Robin is a hard little bugger.. he'll face off the cat and he's lightning fast when the pounce comes.... not many things faster than an agile hunting cat.. but the Robin is a demon

[KidChameleon]

I was good at keeping the bird table topped up through the Spring and Summer but then I got lax in about September when I started spending time away. Now, with the cold weather, I've bought a 20kg bag of bird seed for £9 and 50 fat balls for £6. Much cheaper than the local pet shop. This weekend i've cut the bacon rind off and chopped it into small bits for the birds.

In the Spring we had a couple of families of Blue and Great Tits, so we were seeing about ten of each at any one time. It was interesting to watch them going from scruffy, grey feathered juveniles to brightly coloured adults. Now there are hardly any birds out there.

I have problems with Wood Pigeons. They're big and fat, and eat a whole tray of seeds in one sitting. I'm thinking of making a kind of wooden cage around the table, but that might be unsightly.

[jon bda]

Just remember if your feeding fat balls, use a proper holder, not the nylon net they are supplied in. Lots of smaller birds get their feet tangled in these with inevitable results.

[blueball]

For those who say they don't have birds just keep putting food out. When we moved into our house there were no birds in the garden although it had lots of bushes/trees. We started feeding (mixed seed, sunflower seeds and niger seeds) from proper feeders spread around the garden (to confuse the cats) and our population has grown.

We now get great, blue, coal and long-tailed tits, dunnocks, sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches and the obligatory woodpigeons who hoover up the stuff that drops. My message is just keep feeding, they willl find you if there are trees and bushes around but you may need to put the feeders near the trees rather than near your house.

[this_is_gav]

Just today we've noticed the food from our feeder, which inevitably gets spilled on the ground by the dickies, has attracted at least one rat... I say at least, as it was the same rat which kept coming back and disappearing, so either it's stocking up, or he's collecting for youngsters hidden away in a nest somewhere.

Never known there to be rats around here.

So feeding them, and getting them accustomed to handouts, isn't all good.

Much better to leave them all the way through the year and let them fend for themselves. They've done it for centuries without issue - they're more than capable of foraging for themselves. Worst case scenario is that they move to someone else's garden.

[Tumble]

besides... the local Robin is a hard little bugger.. he'll face off the cat and he's lightning fast when the pounce comes.... not many things faster than an agile hunting cat.. but the Robin is a demon

One of my dad's colleagues at the BBC once did an experiment - he put a tape recorder on the ground and played robin song through it... in 20 minutes the local robins had descended on the machine and pecked it to bits. They're extremely territorial and not at all nice....