Don't bin your leftovers...

[FestiveFug]

Well, don't bin all your leftovers.

Please consider giving them to your garden birds. The days are very short for them at this time of year and they would appreciate lots of the things we don't always eat; like Christmas cake.

I usually have a bowl full of leftovers which I collect in the fridge and then zap in the food processor once a week and put a portion into the bird house each morning. It's free entertainment for me, it helps them to survive and is much better than chucking it into landfill.

Our leftovers include things like pasta, rice, potatoes, cheese, cake, pastry and even scrambled egg.

Oh, and before someone mentions that we should be feeding them 'proper' bird food (which you have to pay for), things like sunflower seed, suet, mealworms, etc then yes, I already do that!

I really enjoy watching the birds and hope to inspire one or two of you to take up this as a new hobby in 2024.

Left...Overs? What are leftovers?

Seriously though, any extra food we have we are either going to eat ourselves over the next few days, or freeze for another time. :/

Pretty much the only bits of food here that get composted are the bits that've been smooshed around by a toddler and then discarded. 🤢

(I too may have been hoping for a tasty recipe! 😬)

I did this and had a huge rat welcome itself into my house and live in the bird seed cupboard until I found ripped up bits of cardboard in there, my dog killed it and there's no more bird feeding from me now.

@Siha345 I read an interesting topic on rats and cats after wondering why a rat would be stupid enough to come into my house when I have 3 cats, apparently the scent of a cat will deter rats from coming out much but they do very little to the rat population on a whole.

"With a feral feline colony and a feral rat colony, you’d expect a lot of blood to flow, right? Well as it turns out, that’s not the case. Over 79 days, cats killed just two rats. They usually went for easier prey.
Overall, researchers analyzed 306 videos taken over the study period. Although a few cats were always active around the rat colony, the researchers recorded just 20 stalking events, three kill attempts, and two successful kills. The two kills were when cats found rats in hiding and took them by surprise. The unsuccessful attempt was when during a chase — a cat lost interest in the rat."

https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/biology-reference/ecology-articles/cats-vs-rats-nope-03102018/ Here's the full article if anyone wants a read.

We never have leftovers that we can't eat! 🐽
Please don't put out mince pies or Christmas cake etc if you have dogs, as some of it will fall to the ground and your dog will eat them, they contain currants, sultanas etc & are highly toxic.

We used to give birds leftovers and rats moved in. We miss feeding the birds, but we are not going to put ourselves through that again.

I won't be doing this - there are some absolutely huge seagulls where we live and I have young children who I want to be able to play in the garden! Also most people have a separate food waste bin so it doesn't go to landfill a lot of the time anyway.