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 🐦

Beautiful picture @Mykittensmittens! Little Jay is so handsome!

Loving the thought of your fat birds @FlosCampi

So nice to read all of your garden bird stories everyone, I've learnt a lot. Thanks for posting everyone.

Strange day on my feeding station today: stacks of rooks first thing, then starlings and blackbirds, but the finches and tits were far fewer today... maybe they overindulged yesterday!

[quote Mykittensmittens]@middleager here is my jay! This was this morning. This is ‘little’ jay - we have about 6. This one is very skitty and nervous. This is taken from my kitchen window (very close!)[/quote]
Beautiful! How fabulous to see this.

Quintuple bullfinch for me today - three males and two females! One of the males isn't as bright as the others and can't work out how to get through the squirrel guard, so he flies underneath and picks off the bits that get caught at the base. Very tidy.

I'd forgotten about siskins! I got a lot of them a few years back but only the odd one recently. I sometimes get a greenfinch too, and yesterday there was a wren hopping about (they are the most common bird in the UK, astonishingly).
Today I've just had the usual squabbling crowd of starlings and goldfinches with the odd blue/great tit.

[quote Corvid19]@Gastropod I have two of these and they are mobbed!
I did put one in the front garden initially, but it was a bit quiet. Both in back garden now. If you Google bird feeding station lots come up and there seems to be lots of good sale prices ATM.

www.trowellgardencentre.co.uk/products/smart-garden-chapelwood-complete-dining-station-black?currency=GBP&variant=32466570870839&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google%20Shopping&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9vrut4-s9QIVdPbVCh3a-AtcEAQYBSABEgJILPD_BwE[/quote]

@Corvid19 - I just wanted to thank you for posting the link to the feeding station. I was so excited to receive it about 20 minutes ago, and put it up, I now can't wait to see it in the light of day!! Thank you! I've also crushed the peanuts and only filled the feeders half way following your advice on those.

What a wonderfully helpful and lovely thread.

As an add on to the peanuts, I have a special bird feeder which holds jars of Flutter butter= birds love peanut butter but the human kind has salt which is toxic to birds, so this is a special salt free kind. They absolutely love it. In the Spring when the adults go hungry to feed the baby birds they have got through a decent sized jar in six hours

We have four cats, and over lockdown the Junior Engineer (who's 11) started feeding the garden birds but also, specifically, the rooks and the jackdaws. - on grounds that the cats won't take on the bigger corvids.

They have now started to return the favour and give us things, which is .... yeah. Kind of odd. Hazelnuts, the odd shiny bead, bits of pottery, and I had an old corn cob dropped on my head last week....

I'm no good with recognising birds but we have a regular one which I'm sure is a blackbird. Sometimes an enormous scary raven-type bird perches on the guttering outside the window. A robin now and again, and various small, not-very-exciting-looking birds, the identity of which I don't know.

Oh nice to see some new posts. Thank you everyone. I'm going to be making a list of all the birds mentioned on here and see how many I spot in the coming months.

Love your grateful corvids, @MrsRussell! Mine haven't given me any presents yet!

@MahMahMahMahCorona aw bless you, you're welcome. I hope you enjoy your new hobby, as I am. Have you had many visitors yet?

Don't forget to sign up for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch, everyone.🐦

www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/?sourcecode=BWMITH0230&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppcad&utm_content=guide_request_various&utm_campaign=birdwatch2031&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlbjzobuz9QIVHOrtCh2_kA0rEAAYASAAEgKdG_D_BwE

@Daleksatemyshed

As an add on to the peanuts, I have a special bird feeder which holds jars of Flutter butter= birds love peanut butter but the human kind has salt which is toxic to birds, so this is a special salt free kind. They absolutely love it. In the Spring when the adults go hungry to feed the baby birds they have got through a decent sized jar in six hours

Thanks for this info. I smeared normal peanut butter on the tree yesterday, had no idea it was harmful.

[quote Corvid19]Oh nice to see some new posts. Thank you everyone. I'm going to be making a list of all the birds mentioned on here and see how many I spot in the coming months.

Love your grateful corvids, @MrsRussell! Mine haven't given me any presents yet!

@MahMahMahMahCorona aw bless you, you're welcome. I hope you enjoy your new hobby, as I am. Have you had many visitors yet?

Don't forget to sign up for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch, everyone.🐦

www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/?sourcecode=BWMITH0230&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppcad&utm_content=guide_request_various&utm_campaign=birdwatch2031&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlbjzobuz9QIVHOrtCh2_kA0rEAAYASAAEgKdG_D_BwE[/quote]
Done!

Plenty of blue tits, blackbirds, robins, starlings, wood pigeons, the odd crow, occasional magpie, and just once a couple of fieldfares.

@Corvid19 - we have seen a robin, lots of blue tits, a song thrush, a couple of wood pigeons eating the scraps off the grass below. And we think we saw a bird we didn't know and have identified it as a coal tit - rather than a blue head it has the same markings as a blue fit but the head is black...

Our next mission is to search the local charity shops for a pocket sized bird guide. The DC have loved sitting in the front room quiet as mice and watching the birds! It's so mesmeric - thank you again!

We have a "pet" pheasant (called "Fuzzy") and a red spotted woodpecker ("Woody") as well as many if the birds mentioned upthread. And beautiful bright bullfinches.

We have wood pigeons, collared doves, sparrows, multiple tits, and we now have multiple other type pigeons; some with beautiful colouring - black white feathers, all sorts

Sometimes there are around 50+ (not a joke or making it up) feeding from the feeders and the bird tables

We end up spending a fortune on seed and fat balls

A sparrow hawk came in one day and frit the shit out of all the birds; luckily it has not been back since

Oh and I forgot about the Magpies, we get them too

We get wood pigeons, crows, blackbirds, magpies and the odd woodpecker on our bird table. We put a regular seed mix out for them

On the hanging feeders which are filled with sunflower seeds we get mainly finches, bluetits, robins and siskins

We have other feeders for the starlings who go for the mealworms. They’re greedy and get through a feeder in no time.

We do get birds of prey from time to time. All the birds disappear for hours after their visit.

The most unusual visitors have been a massive heron who stalked around the garden briefly and a moorhen. The moorhen stayed for a couple of weeks in our pond.

I've got a robin!

Occasional blue tit, millions of starlings, pigeons and sparrows. Some thrushes. Also a host of bright green parakeets.

I have a feeder stuck to the window. The stupid fat pigeons sit on it and try desperately to eat from it.

@Mykittensmittens Love the photo. Did you know the blue is an optical illusion?

DH puts food out.
Daily visitors include robin, pigeon, blackbird, crow, blue tit, long-tailed tit, great tit, green finch, gold finch, jackdaw, magpie and a pair of pheasants who come for breakfast.
Less frequent - greater spotted woodpecker, green woodpecker, sparrow hawk, bull finch, collared dove.
Can hear owls most nights but never seen one here.

Lovely thread . I started feeding the birds this winter too. I have fat balls, peanuts and mixed seeds in various types of feeders.

So far I've attracted a crow, 3 fat wood pigeons, some robins and a squirrel that I've noticed.

I'm going to sign up to the RPSB Birdwatch, it will encourage me to put my glasses on and properly identify the birds. I've just returned from 20 years overseas and my bird-recognition skills are low.

It's lovely feeding and watching the birds isnt it. I love the Bullfinches, as you can tell. Also very fond of the corvids too.

Dont forget to put fresh water out each day.

Remove the peanuts in early Spring - they're a chocking hazard to chicks and young birds