Help me feed birds!

[GeneralMusings]

I have got the merlin app recently and enjoying listening to the (quite ordinary) birds around my area. I don't have rhme in my garden though. How do I attract them?

I've ordered a crook feeder and 2 wire mesh things to hang from them. But I could also put a saucer on our patio table?

How often should I put feed out? What shpidl I put out? I've ordered fat balls and peanuts and seed from tescos
...

I think my gran used to put breadcrumbs and leftovers out? Is that still okay? Admittedly she had a proper bird table rather than my garden table!

Thankyou.

I have a feeding station.

A bird seed mix, peanuts, suet pellets, suet blocks and sunflower hearts are what I put out.
Refill when nearly empty as the birds do flock to it daily, all day not just early morning/evening time and at the moment I've so many nesting birds in the garden and it's busy so I'd hate for it to run out of food completely.

It could take a while for the birds to feed from whatever you put out though so don't worry if there's no sign of them.

Water is also important for birds so even a shallow dish on the ground, preferably not in direct sunlight, will be much appreciated.

Oooh I've got a very basic version of that coming with just the 2 top hanging bits.

I've hung up a set of 3 hanging ones in my lilac tree now though with peanuts/balls/mixed bird seed and I've seen a blue tit sort of come an investigate the balls a couple of times.

I sprinkled bird seed on the ground yesterday and today but not seen any come for it. Is it best on concrete so it shows up or on the grass?

I assume I should remove what doesn't get eaten as yesterday's is till there - I thought it might go!

I'm not working much this week and seriously wishing I had the money for more plants /get rid of our dodgy concrete 😂.

Mine is on the grass, near ish to trees so they hop from tree to feeder.

You can only put yours where your area allows it to fit, the birds will find it.

I leave mine out 24/7, ground feeding birds like blackbirds/sparrows and robins tend to peck at the seed on the ground.

I've put an old wok, upside down, on the stand of mine to stop the squirrels cleaning me out of food but if it does happen you can buy ones that are plastic that do the same job.

@GeneralMusings I have the Merlin app too and it has provided me with hours of fascination! I put seed into feeders in my garden but if I do anymore (ie a cage of fat balls) at this time of year the bloody starlings (14 of them on Friday!) take over and demolish everything. I also have very fat pigeons who take any feed that isn't in a feeder so I can't put a tray feeder out for tits and blackbirds. Recently had a huge, beautiful but nasty magpie using the bird baths.

We always found that birds go mad, absolutely mad for meal worms. I used to order massive boxes of them on Amazon, they go in a flash, expensive too

But, we have seagulls and unfortunately they just trash the place if theres food around, pulling off the feeders, smashing pots, being aggressive around the cat

So we havent fed the birds for years now. Its a shame we used to get big gangs of starlings, very noisy and lovely to see. Also got some great tits, blue tits, finches, blackbirds etc etc.

Such a shame now.

@blobby10 what a shame you think magpies are nasty! They are just birds doing their bird thing.
I have a pair who nest in next door's front garden but have been around for years. They visit my garden regularly, and they bring their chicks with them when they are old enough. They seem to be friends with a pair of crows as they four of them often visit together.

I mostly get lots of tits (great,blue, coal and longtailed), a pair of robins, the dunnocks that live in the hedge, blackbirds, goldfinches, greenfinches, nuthatches, jays and I am seeing bullfinches more often too. I once had a sparrow hawk which was quite exciting!

@MagpiePi I do think magpies are beautiful but their behaviour towards the other birds in my garden is nasty! However the other birds are small so maybe if they were the same size or bigger I would see the nice side of them

Make your garden wildlife friendly.

My aunt is always complaining that the birds don't come into her garden. She has a very neat garden - a square of lawn with no weeds, neat borders with lots of small bedding plants and a few mature shrubs, bare waney lap fencing and no weeds allowed.

Birds don't just come for the feeders, they want insects, grubs and worms to feed off. They need somewhere to nest and perch so trees, hedges and/or large shrubs.

• Plant native perennials and not so many bedding plants
• Allow weeds - I leave a few dandelions in the rockery wall near my house as it means I get a very good view of goldfinches eating them! Butterflies lovely sunny clumps of nettles
• Have some water out for them to drink and preferably a wildlife pond, but even leaving a bucket out to fill with rainwater can attract frogs
• Don't be too tidy- stacks of waste materials can attract invertebrates and hedgehogs
• Make a bug house from waste materials, pallets, old roof tiles, straw, sticks etc- I have one in a cool, dry shady corner where nothing would grow anyway.

If you haven't a lot of money to spend on plants you can get a bunch of wildflower seeds or a seed mat and a bag of compost. Plant it now, water regularly and you should get loads of flowering plants by high summer.

Aldi do big boxes of seeds really cheaply.

Do you have cats or neighbourhood cats that frequent your garden? I never have birds in my garden as I have my own 2 cats and because I have a pond seem to host all the other neighbourhood cats too. My old nextdoor neighbours used to feed the birds and would get lots though. It's a responsibility though you have to keep it up as they will return and rely on you especially through the winter.

For ground feeding birds you can get little wire meshes (a bit like an upside down hanging basket) to go over the floor food to protect them from predators.

My cats don't go out much now and used to be very good hunters but it doesn't seem to have ever stopped the birds coming in droves.

A warning for wildflower seeds they spread massively. After planting a meter of wildflowers around my pond in 2020 I have no actual turf left now as it's all wildflower, not particularly pretty ones either but ones the insects like, teasels, sorrel, salad burnet, ox eye daisy's and a patch of poppies.

Given that my lawn has pretty much gone I've experimented this year and will just mow in March and October and see what grows in-between but it's largely waist height now of various plants. The wildlife pond means mowing or strumming is fairly treacherous due to the frogs and I don't want to maim them.

Yes, things can spread. But grass interspersed with weeds is much better for the environment than plain grass. I plant more invasive/hardy things in the front garden which is NE facing and only gets the morning sun, and find they just grow normally rather than going mad!

Birds are messy! They spray feed all over the place, so be prepared to have all manner of seeds sprouting underneath it, or in the cracks of concrete. You can buy 'mess free' or 'sprout' free varieties though.
I have black birds and Mrs Blackbird knows when I'm gardening and will wait till I throw a worm for her. Each year, her and Mr Blackbird bring their chicks in the garden. They fledge when barely able to fly and look like cute, little fluffy balls!

I recently bought the roam wild feeders which close if a rat/pigeon or squirrel try using them.

I hadn't thought of the seeds sowing things!!!

Maybe I should buy just the sunflower seeds as at least I like sunflowers 😂.

So far today every now and then I see a blue tit on the fat ball. It kind of tentatively flies into the tree and then down and takes a bite and flies off as if to check it out.

I also briefly saw a blackbird peck at the seed on the patio but most of that is still there and I think it's going to rain later. (mental note not to spread the bird seed on the grass as that is literally sowing it 😂)

The peanut hanger and the hanger of general feed hasn't been touched. Or the bird bath.

TBH, for some of us, the birds get up much earlier than we do so you'll never know if they've had a morning dip, but they'll appreciate the bird bath.

While the birds on my feeder flit between feeder and 'fresh garden bugs' for most of the day morning and evenings are the time when there's a flurry and it's a feeding frenzy.

I've several bird boxes/nesting places around my garden, 5 of which I can sit on the patio area and see, and all have birds feeding off the feeder and going to and fro into the boxes.

This year for the first time of living here in 3 years we have starlings, before around 2 weeks ago I never spotted one in that time, they can empty the feeders within hours.

Bit of a pain really but even starlings have to eat.

@GeneralMusings forgot to mention we also have one of the window feeders that are clear Perspex and stick on with suckers. This is what happens when the squirrel decides it's having the food whether you like it or not.

Or you can provide a multitude of healthy specially selected bird foods and fat little fellows like this wood pigeon come along and hoover up the Goldfish crackers your kids dropped when having a picnic

Interesting article, thanks.

It says at the end:
"We are not proposing that bird feeding should end, as that would be unrealistic and unnecessary. However, we do suggest that, where possible, regular bird feeding should be cautiously reconsidered, reduced or discouraged around the remaining core habitats of Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, in light of their perilous population declines. The same may apply to providing nestboxes for Blue Tits and Great Tits in sensitive areas..." [my emphasis]

Which suggests it's okay if you don't live near woodland.

And: "Even switching the foods used for bird feeding could be beneficial, by avoiding sunflowers, peanuts and fats that are favoured by the common tits and, instead, providing millet or cereals that are attractive to declining House Sparrows, Tree Sparrows Passer montanus and other farmland birds."

So I think I'll try this, as I do live about half a mile from some woodland, - though don't know whether it's inhabited by Marsh or Willow Tits (apparently picky about type of woodland).

I also read elsewhere that Marsh Tits (who hoard food - seeds and insects) are sometimes seen at bird feeders, so wonder if (if one's garden is visited by them) it'd be helpful to put out seeds and mealworms (i.e. insects) for them?

I do notice that my bird table is visited by different birds compared to the hanging feeders. The Great and Blue Tits definitely prefer the hanging feeders. So maybe the thing to do is ditch the hanging feeders, ditch the suet completely, and have table only, with seeds (except sunflower) and mealworm only on offer. So that it's less beneficial for the dominant Great and Blue Tits, but still helpful for other birds including maybe the Marsh and Willow Tits.

100% agree that it's essential not to use chemicals such as weedkiller, etc etc in the garden, which destroy food/habitats for countless creatures.

@GeneralMusings If cats visit your garden, it's a bad idea to put bird food (or bird bath) on the ground or on the garden table.

My bird table (with just a flat top) is over 4ft high, and the bird bath, though not as high, is stand-alone therefore provides a good view for birds if a cat is approaching.

I think one of the issues with Marsh/Willow Tits is that populations have been lost from a lot of small woods, partly as a result of habitat changes and partly due to pressure from the commoner species. So the whole landscape has just become progressively less suitable for them.

Even if they do benefit somewhat from being able to cache food from feeders (although not if it's something like peanuts that will rot), that's always going to be outweighed by the fact that it's this year-round food source that's really helping their competitors.

It might sound harsh, but one of the factors that the food-cachers and the migrants rely on is that numbers of the non-migratory generalists are kept in check by winter food shortages, plus the occasional hard winter. With mild winters and an abundance of bird feeders, those relative advantages disappear.

Another consideration that I think deserves more prominence is that birds should be an indicator of habitat quality. So if you improve the habitat, bird numbers should increase and reflect that. But feeding breaks that link - birds tell you little about the underlying habitat and invertebrate populations if they're just coming to feeders.

So what would you recommend I do in terms of food offerings (if any)?

Personally none. But I know most people don't like that answer! I just don't see that it's of any conservation benefit, and is harmful on balance.

Personally, I also get more pleasure from seeing birds doing their natural behaviour in the wild than from seeing a succession of tits etc visiting a feeder. It just seems wrong.

We get more finches than tits. I don't put out feed all year round, but just when birds may need a little more help in winter and spring.

Coming back here as it seems the starlings I thought were nesting in the house opposite have disappeared. They used to sing from both the rooftops and have compeltely gone.

I have seen 2 magpies that jump around could they have scared them off?

And I'm getting bluetits on my feeder! I got to work from home today so have been able to watch them appear sporadically which was nice.

And a magpie came to my bird bath!

There's a Mr blackbird that seems to come in the morning and I put some seed out for him but then he runs away and I think I scare him!

I see a buzzard too but normally it's the app that tells me it's there and then I look up!

We have Robbins but I've not seen one here. I do at work though!