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 🐦

An unusually bold blue tit eyeballing me through the window. They're normally more skittish than the coal tits, but it was quite cold weather.

Hi we put out Suet balls in the feeders we get robins, sparrows, great tits, coal tits, blue tits, long tailed tits ( that visit in a little flock of about 10), the occasional goldfinch, wood pigeons, crows, magpies, starlings. I have once seen a sparrow hawk and last year when there was snow on the ground we had regular visits from a great spotted woodpecker. We also put some old food - bread / cereal on the bird table that is only used by the magpies, pigeons and a grey squirrel.

Thanks all, it's so nice reading about all your lovely birds and learning a bit more about feeding.
Think I'm going to make a list of things to spot and tick off.

At the end of today's session, my birds had emptied out the mixed seed container and the sunflower heart container, cleared a dish piled with dried calci worms and cranberry suet pellets, and scoffed 4 fat balls. This is turning into an expensive hobby!
I bought super duper high quality fatballs from "Love Garden Birds" but will likely switch to Wilko grade next time.

We are half wood and lots the same as @DinosApple

Jays - they’re so shy but they eat acorns and we have lots of oaks. Around now the fallen acorns start to decline so they come to the bird table

Woodpeckers. I’ll try to attach a photo but they are also quite shy

Sparrow hawks
Buzzards
All the tits! My favourite are the long tailed tit family who are like a manic bunch of fluff balls.

Grumpy blackbirds
Robins
Wrens
Nut hatches
Thrushes
Starlings

No sparrows sadly

You’ll have to zoom in to spot the woodpecker!

@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.

I had difficulty every time I tried on and off for years. Last time I tried while the (very generous to birds) next door neighbours were on holiday and their usual visitors found us. We kept the visitors even once the neighbours came home.

Plenty of tits and corvids, so many blackbirds I can't count them, and the last couple of weeks a wonderful stunning mistle thrush.
I have three robins who have adjacent territories along the garden - the racket when one wanders into another territory!
Rarer visitors have been the jays (there's a beautiful young one hanging about at the moment), nuthatch and - only once in 10 years - a hawfinch. This coincided with a flush of hawfinchs in a churchyard a mile or so away - the local twitchers were...well....a-twitch! My visitor must have got a little lost.

@Corvid19

Thanks all, it's so nice reading about all your lovely birds and learning a bit more about feeding. Think I'm going to make a list of things to spot and tick off.

At the end of today's session, my birds had emptied out the mixed seed container and the sunflower heart container, cleared a dish piled with dried calci worms and cranberry suet pellets, and scoffed 4 fat balls. This is turning into an expensive hobby!
I bought super duper high quality fatballs from "Love Garden Birds" but will likely switch to Wilko grade next time.

You have to think long term there.

Plant a cotoneaster, pyracantha and other berries, birds love it.

I love birds, but can't put anything out due to having 2 cats. Seems cruel to basically give the cats a free lunch!

In autumn our birds ignore the bird table in favour of the cotoneaster, until they have finished the berries. The blackbirds and robins just strip them bare. Right now, in East Cornwall, the camellias are starting to open in sheltered spots and there aren't a lot of insects around yet so the bird table is busy. I saw a kingfisher last week walking the dog along the canal. Any day you see a kingfisher is a good day.

I have mostly starlings, some pigeons on the ground underneath the feeders who eat the crumbs the starlings drop. The pigeons are too fat and heavy to balance on the feeders so they get the scraps. Sometimes crows will come along and scare them all off. Out the front I have foxes visit at night and I put an egg out for them (their favourite food apparently)

I saw a bumblebee yesterday. Very early for it, poor thing.

I've noticed in the past few days the birds (robin & blackbird ) have really started up singing again in earnest..love it

We have a number of hanging feeders with peanuts, suet, general seed, fat balls and niger seeds.

In the garden, we’ve had:

Wood pigeon
Magpies
Blue tits
Great tits
Coal tits
Long tailed tits
Dunnets
Robins
Blackbirds
Wrens
Goldfinches
Chaffinches
Bullfinches
Nuthatches
Tree Creepers
Jays
Crows
Sparrowhawk
Tawny Owl
Woodpeckers
Seagulls
And the cat brought home a dead Goldcrest once

Never any sparrows or starlings

Love this thread!!

I’ve signed up for the RSPB Birdwatch - you can sign up here & let them know all the lovely birds you see

www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/

I’ve got a gorgeous regular Robin at the minute, lots of pigeons, sparrows, blackbirds, blue tits.

Once a sparrow hawk caught a pigeon under the tree at the back of the garden, gave me a proper fright! Haven’t seen it again since.

And lots of squirrels, I need to replace my feeders with squirrel proof ones really, they’re actual hooligans!

@RelaxDays0ffX123

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

Me too! I do miss that. I loved seeing the pheasant babies

We get great tits mainly and also two or three woodpeckers (unless they come in shifts but that’s the most I’ve seen at once).
I put up on small peanut feeder as any bigger gets expensive and I fill it all year round. Today I was half impressed and half disappointed a grey squirrel has worked out how to climb along the branch and get to it too though

In terms of other birds we get screech owls, sparrow hawks, kites, pheasants and pigeons mostly . So many birds of prey and I wonder whether more owls than that as only hear the noises and a neighbour told me

We are in central London. I put out mixed seeds and dried mealworm. We get lots: blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, sparrows, robins, grey and wood pigeons, parakeets and occasionally a coloured dove. I love watching them, really cheers me up!

Love all our birds. Just installed a nesting box with cam. I hope one chooses to have chicks in it.

I'm in Buckinghamshire and feed the birds every day. I used to fill containers hanging from trees but I'm physically disabled and that resulted in two bad falls with broken bones so it's now thrown out onto the patio,

Two robins come first. Although they don't eat much, they see off any other birds until they've finished. Then come the sparrows, blackbirds,
wood pigeons, collared doves, starlings, magpies, I once had a visit from a jay which was pretty special.

I feed them mixed seeds, sunflower seeds, nibbed peanuts, niger seeds (totally ignored), ditto suet pellets with berry flavour, whole peanuts (mostly taken by squirrels) crushed fat balls. I once read birds loved tinned sweetcorn (nope).

I have a container attached to my patio door with a mix of the above plus 2 whole fatballs mainly visited by blue tits and robins. I always kinow when a collared dove has been on it as it's usually hanging on the glass with one suction cap and most of the contents are on the floor.

I have a feeding station in the middle of the garden that has a squirrel baffle on it to stop any raids. I have a Squirrel Buster sunflower heart feeder and several suet block cages/fat ball hangers.

My most common visitors are
Starlings (adore the suet)
Goldfinches
Blue tits
Wood pigeons
Collared doves

Also
Great tits
Coal tits
Long tailed tits
Robins
Dunnocks
Blackbirds
Chaffinches
Red kites in next door's tree

Rarely
Blackcap (both)
Thrush
Magpies
Jackdaws

Once in a Blue moon
Goldcrests
Bullfinches
Redwings

We do have rats under the shed and loads of grey treerats. Keeps the cats occupied and away from the birds!
Fieldfares

I have a perspex window feeder and am in the 2nd floor flat of a tenement building. We have finches, blackbirds and magpies but when i put out grains and seeds I got mice! Mice are not the birds I wanted to attract so switched to meal worms and the mice are gone! Thank goodness!

We mainly have seagulls so they get anything. Stale baked goods. Bacon fat
Chips all sorts

I hate mice can’t believe they managed to get to that food ? Any truly rodent proof feeding options out there?