A nice thread about garden birds. What comes to your garden? Do you feed them? What food you put out? 🐦

[Corvid19]

Hello armchair twitchers and window watchers!

I got two bird feeding stations for Christmas and am so enjoying watching from my window now I have them set up.

I have various tits and finches (mostly blue tits and chaffinches), robins, wagtails, collared doves, a wood pigeon or two, and many corvids (rooks and jackdaws mostly, but the odd crow too), blackbirds and sparrows. I think anyway... I'm still not quite expert at identifying them!

I put out fat balls (the corvids demolish them!) mixed seed, sunflower seed hearts, peanuts, dried wormy things, and fat pellets.
The peanuts are not so popular, but perhaps they will be with summer birds? I blooming hope so, I have a big bloody sack of them!

Tell about your birds 🐦

Also solitary big black crow

So many parakeets being mentioned! I thought they were 'exotic'! I don't think we get them here in South Wales.

All the usual birds but also get mobbed by goldfinches (and some greenfinches) when we put out Niger seeds and sunflower hearts. We get the occasional long tailed tit and coal tit. The only regular customer for peanuts is a greater spotted woodpecker (and the squirrels of course!). We get regular green woodpeckers too but they are only there for the ants they pull out of the ground - and we have a lot of ants! The occasional dunnock. We have Mistle thrush nesting here every year as we have a lot of trees and shrubs with berries. I see a sparrow hawk swooping down on the doves and pigeons sometimes (so presumably, when I do, it’s a female). Jays also visit every so often. And, every year, I fight a battle with the flock of ring necked parakeets to get to the ripe cherries before they strip the lot!

Oh I miss my old garden, we had to move from a rented property that had a huge garden with the perfect window for sitting and watching. We used to get all kinds from greenfinches (although less so in the later years), goldfinches, sparrows, wrens, woodpecker, tits of all kinds!

Anyway, we moved to a house in a village that doesn't have a proper garden outside the window (tiny square across a lane) but I have been fortunate to see a goldcrest, long tailed tit and nuthatch in the neighbour's trees. We do still get some sparrows, robin, blue tits and blackbirds.

Previous property, we lived more rurally
Used to see wood peckers, pheasants & partridges

Also could hear an owl, bit never saw it

There were also bats

Ducks, obviously 😂 Currently have about 12 that come and go along with a moorhen. The heron visits regularly and I often catch a glimpse of a kingfisher at this time of year.
More recently I've had a beautiful yellow wagtail hopping over the lily pads, not something I'd seen before, plus the usual blue tits, sparrows etc
I've had bits of pheasant in the garden (suspect a sparrow hawk is around) but never seen a whole, live one!

Aah we have a sparrow hawk around here (I only knew what it was when my dad pointed it out to me) but they're very distinctive how they swoop. They kill quite a lot of the birds around here.

Being a furriner, I don't know what most of the birds are, but we have a lovely little robin who comes to visit, as well as a flock of what we think are house sparrows, and some chaffinches. There are some blackbirds hanging about too, but I've never seen them on the feeder. We also have a squirrel who enjoys picking up the dropped seeds.

We feed mixed seeds and crushed peanuts. Initially I didn't crush the peanuts and the birds showed no interest, but now that I do they take them.

I've got another feeder to hang on the hooks and I'll use that for fat balls when it gets really cold.

@AlanThePig do you have a whole big lake in your garden? Envious if so! Ducks!

Good idea about crushing the nuts, @GrouchyKiwi I'll try that.

[quote Corvid19]@AlanThePig do you have a whole big lake in your garden? Envious if so! Ducks!

Good idea about crushing the nuts, @GrouchyKiwi I'll try that.[/quote]
I do. It’s in my front garden 😂
I had a thread on here after our ducks decided to pop out ducklings in winter.

I say ours. They are wild but exceptionally tame and know where the food comes from.

Ah what a lovely thread!

I've a couple of feeders in the garden full of sunflower hearts.

Most common:
Goldfinches
Blue tits
Great tits
Chaffinch
Wood pigeon
Collared doves
Magpie
Robin
Dunnock
Blackbird

Excited to see recently also
Green woodpecker
Blackcap
Jay

In spring/summer we have whitethroat as we back onto a field. They are my fave.

I get sparrows and house sparrows. A few Coal tits and I've seen one Blue tit.

Got mixed seed and I made pannatone fat balls which all went in one day.

I've seen a robin but she was in the front garden.

@TiddleTaddleTat

Sorry to be a dampener but we get no visitors! Don’t know if it’s because neighbours have an incredible feeding station very popular with lots of birds, or because we have a cat, or something else? Had two feeders - one of the classic type with a special seed mix I bought online with mealworms added and then a window box one - clear plastic stuck to the conservatory. Nothing came and then the food rotted so I took down. Any tips? We have brick walls, hedges, conservatory that we could mount them on.

We also have a cat so make sure your feeders are up high out of cat jumping reach , and also with some ideally shrub or tree nearby they can scooch to and from and check it out from a vantage point.

We only have a window, plus a narrow strip of 'garden' we're in an old French apartment block right in the middle of the city. We have peanuts, fatballs and seeds out - though we restrict the latter as the grubby street pigeons go nuts for them. The little birds though, we love seeing them. Sparrow, great tits, blue tits mostly, the occasional chaffinch and robin. We had a robin last year we was bold as brass - if the window was open even a little bit he'd come right inside!

It's better than telly. During lockdown, DH and I turned our armchairs round to face the window and watch the birds. And the nicest thing is that the elderly residents in our building just love seeing and hearing the little birds, it puts a smile on their faces.

We are in what was a fairly woodland area so we get a lot of woodland birds, jays, tree creepers, nuthatches etc.

Also the usual pigeons, magpies, robins, blue tits, other types of tits and occasionally a wren.

Once we say a group of great tits "mob" a jay - it was fascinating to watch. And we've seen a sparrow hawk come down and grab a pigeon.

Ah yes, @AlanThePig, I remember your thread. How lovely, ducks aren't usual garden birds!

Lovely to read of everyone's feathered visitors. I hope we see some new beaky faces soon and have ordered a poster for my kitchen wall to help identify them.

Panettone fat balls, @ElenaCouch? You're spoiling them! They won't want ordinary bird food now!

This thread has got me very excited to set up my own bird feeder, we’ve recently moved house and for the first time in my life we have a garden! We have a resident squirrel and wood pigeons, and I also once glimpsed a rat in the garden, what would be the best way to discourage those, especially the rat? I thought perhaps one of the feeders with the tray at the bottom to try and limit seeds falling onto the ground. We have a family of sparrows that I love to watch, about 12 of them all flying in at once!

Well @Sunbeams09 I have literally DAYS of experience with feeding birds, so hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along soon to advise.

I agree though that it would likely be a good idea to avoid seeds etc. dropping onto the ground if there are rats around.

I hope you enjoy your new birds!

This year has been poor for fruit, but when we have a good year with lots of apples on the floor in the orchard we have swarms of blackbirds, thrushes, fieldfares, and redwings. You open a window and the entire ground takes flight. Not this year sadly!

On the feeders we have robins, dunnocks, sparrows, chaffinches, goldfinches, great tits, coal tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits (my favourite), collared doves, jackdaws, woodpigeons, and the occasional spotted woodpecker.

And one fat squirrel.

@Sunbeams09

This thread has got me very excited to set up my own bird feeder, we’ve recently moved house and for the first time in my life we have a garden! We have a resident squirrel and wood pigeons, and I also once glimpsed a rat in the garden, what would be the best way to discourage those, especially the rat? I thought perhaps one of the feeders with the tray at the bottom to try and limit seeds falling onto the ground. We have a family of sparrows that I love to watch, about 12 of them all flying in at once!

If rats are a problem then as a first step I would remove the food temporarily. But honestly your best bet is a trap. They're persistent and intelligent and if there's a constant source of food you won't get rid of it with any amount of baffles or clever feeders.

Peanut and sunflower seed in feeders in urban (shared) garden - sparrows, great tits, blue tits, feral pigeons, wood pigeons, jackdaws, greenfinches, bramblings and the odd great spotted woodpecker, blackcap, very lost pheasant and parakeet.

I live on a housing estate which does border countryside but don't get much variety. Over the summer we used to spend our evening hours sitting in the garden watching sparrows, starlings (loads of the bloody things) and blackbirds. Realised that different pigeons have different courting rituals - who knew that putting a wing over another bird was a come on! . Have seen the occasional robin but they never want to feed. Usually put out mixed seeds in the tube thing and fat balls. no takers for peanuts round here.

However I have now got a dish style feeder which i hope the robins and blue tits will prefer. Also got some dried mealworms cos I can't face getting the live ones!!

sunflower hearts, niger seed and dried mealworms on our bird tables and in the feeders

I don't bother with mixed seed or peanuts any more.

We have bullfinches, chaffinches, green finches and gold finches at ours - in an urban garden. As well as the usual others.

I think the single key is to make sure it never runs out. We had fledglings come all summer and now they are adults they keep coming back.

Oh, and water if the conditions are freezing.

lovely.

You can't put out a trap to catch a rat that's outside! Anything could get caught in it. If you're concerned about rats then the best thing to do is to stop putting out food for a while.

We get long tailed tits which are my favourite. They never come alone always in groups of 6 or more. Woodpeckers are another favourite of mine.

This is a lovely thread but I am getting twitchy thinking about all the rats you are all going to get in your gardens 😂😂. I don't put any birdfood out and I keep my garden tidy and I still get plenty of birds. We get red kites, owls, magpies, crows, jays, woodpeckers and all the other normal garden birds.
The crows used to be very dominant but following some nearby trees being felled there aren't so many. I'm glad as they are too thuggish.

When we moved in there were wrens in garden but after some landscaping they disappeared. It wasn't possible to keep the garden as it was as it was completely overgrown and dragged by some hideous laylandii - I've planted lots of native plants and trees and it's been lovely watching the garden birds come back.
I don't want to encourage rats though.