Lack of insects, birds starving

[noblegiraffe]

I'm seeing a lot of discussion on twitter about a distinct lack of insects this year, possibly due to the cold spring, but obviously pesticides are also an issue.

Birds who eat insects are really struggling and there are reports of baby birds dying because their parents can't feed them.

Please put food (and water) out for the birds! My bird feeder has been mobbed all week.

https://twitter.com/woodlandbirder/status/1662080648922779650?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g (warning: contains picture of dead chicks)

So sad.
I think it's also due to people paving over their gardens and bloody artificial grass. People are striving to have 'perfect' Instagram plastic gardens without a thought for the wildlife whilst also spraying anything that moves 😡

This makes me so sad. Ds and I absolutely love birds. We always leave lots of food out for them and a shallow dish of water. We have a garden full of blackbird’s feeding their babies at the moment and a wood pigeon feeding their fledgling. It’s magical to watch.

Very sad, reminded me to top up my bird feeders. We have a pond, which the birds drink from.

It doesn't surprise me. There's an increasing number of gardens in our estate who either pave over their whole garden or put plastic grass down. The birds and insects are being crowded out.

Obviously I'm letting everything go nuts and encouraging dandelions and teasles and keeping water out. I've got a small tree that is just over fence height now and the birds are starting to sit in it. My other neighbours have removed their shrubs and trees.

Now I think about it I haven’t seen as many insects, or a wide variety, and I’ve been spending more than usual time outside (garden and country walks) recently. I still feed the birds but was worried that I shouldn’t be in May (something I read on another thread last week suggested it helps common species but not the ones that need help) - having seen this I’ll definitely continue. Thank you OP.

There are shed loads in our garden. Send them all over! I desperately need some tits to eat all the greenfly.

What is the best thing to feed to small birds? I have a specific squirrel/large bird-proof small bird feeder but whatever seeds I put in it last didn’t tempt them too much.

Dont spray your greenfly away! Essential food for some baby birds.

Luckily our tits have eaten all of my greenfly on my roses! We've had a whole host of birds this week, I think it was something mad like 15 blackbirds this morning all squawking for food - I've gone through a months worth of bird food just this week! Blackbirds, blue tits, robins - we've even had a woodpecker turn up this week which I've loved.

It's sad a lot of people seem to thing of birds in the garden being a nuisance, I love them

Also what is it with pulling out shrubs and trees and lawn and putting down artificial grass/tarmacing drives? Wtf is wrong with people… I despair.

I think you just have to experiment. They all seem to like different things. Ours won’t touch an expensive bird seed but they seem to love Tesco high energy seed mix! I’m refilling the feeders every day at the moment! (We have blue tits, other various tits and sparrows). We find the larger birds like starlings and blackbirds tend to prefer seeds sprinkled on the ground underneath the feeders - obviously don’t do this if you have a lot of cats around, we’re lucky we have none near us. Fat balls are always popular too. Pigeons love peanuts and the little nuggets of fatty seed mix you can buy.

I’ve never seen so many birds round my feeders as they have this year. I put out a variety different insects, fat balls and seeds etc. i wish everyone would do this and stop chopping back to these hideous minimalistic fake grass love island style gardens.

I agree. I think there’s a real lack of interest and knowledge when it comes to gardens now. I am not particularly old (mid 40s) but I think younger couples don’t have the inclination to garden like older people do. (I’m generalising of course, there will be exceptions)! People don’t tend to realise that if you choose shrubs carefully they don’t need any maintenance at all really. I have a whole line of lovely flowering shrubs around the back of my garden, full of berries and flowers and I maybe do 20 mins of pruning once a year and that’s it.

I love birds but pest control advised me to stop feeding them, due to a rat infestation. 😪

Alternatively you can have a garden full of perennials which pop up every spring and need nothing more than a chop back once they're dead (i do mine in spring as the stems give lots of insect hidey places).

I feed suet blocks as the birds need energy this time of years as they're feeding chicks all day. And then make up my own mix of suet nuggets, no grow seeds and mealworms which goes down a treat

I've just had about 30 startling raid the suet feeder 🙄 and we feed loads of sparrows and robins. We have a lot of bird life round here but I love 50m from open fields so the goldfinch etc stay away most of the year.

So worrying

My shrub Rose's are still not budding yet, they are being overrun with green flies. I'm determined not to use pesticides so I'm just watering them off each day. The ladybirds just haven't arrived - they usually arrive in Mid May in droves and clean the roses, but this year I haven't seen a single one.

The pond and overflow have had the usual frogs & toads and plenty of spiders hanging around, but very few flies and also far fewer slugs. My lettuce has not been munched to a nub for this first time in years!

I have pet cats so a bird feeder in my garden would double up the feeding for wrong reasons.

I know where the insects are: out on the rivers, omg, mozzie central yesterday. Where TF are the swallows, swifts & martins that should be feeding on them?

I'm a gardener by trade and am constantly advising my clients and anyone else who will listen (including mumnset) not to use pesticides and weedkillers.

Please, please, please do not use them.

I agree with this - I live on a new build estate where most have got rid of their turf and paved or laid artificial grass down.

I participate in no mow may and my garden is absolutely teeming with insects at the moment - goes to show that given the right environment they will flourish.

The good thing about insects is that they're a system...if you just leave them they all eat each other so you don't need pesticides. It's a self controlling system and if you mess with it you end up with infestations of stuff and no predators to get rid of them.

I have bird feeder but it isn’t being heavily used at the moment so they must be eating elsewhere.

bird flu has also killed many, many wild birds.
dounle whammy.
cats don't help either. keep them indoors over night

We have a flock of starlings who visit us (and scream) every morning. They like my pear tree so I assume there is food hanging around there for them.

My neighbour has complained to my LL about the noise they make on a morning and I have to "take steps to discourage large numbers of wild birds from congregating in my garden"

Rest assured I won't be taking any such steps but I am waiting on the letter giving me x amount of days to remove the pear tree.

I try to leave bits of the garden wild for the bees and birds but I have to keep most of it looking smart and neat or else I get nasty letters from the LL due to complaints. I am open to planting things that will stay small and look groomed but still help wildlife if anyone has any ideas? We're in the process of seeding the grass with micro clover since we cannot let the dandelions be.

I don’t know why some people are so locked-up in the head about gardens. In so many cases, even without fake grass, gardens are chopped and strimmed to an inch of their lives to look manicured and neat. We have an ‘untidy’ dark area that is a mass of holly, laurel, bay and honeysuckle. It’s a refuge for wrens, robins and blackbirds, without it they would not feel safe. We also have several pairs of swallow who make a mess of the cars, but it’s a delight to see them here every year, the descendants of those that have lived here forever.

As we continue to bend nature, one day it will have enough. The earth will snap back at humankind and we will be gone but the earth will recover.

Every year I see crows and magpies taking baby birds from their nests. It's heartbreaking to see. There are SO many crows and magpies I can't picture how the little birds can survive.

I have never used weedkiller before but was considering for first time at end of summer out of desperation. As a gardener do you have a natural way to get rid of horsetail, it's absolutely rampant and outcompetes and kills off everything else.