Is everyone putting food out for the birds?

[mysarahlee]

It's so cold, the ground birds can't dig.

Chuck some leftover Christmas nuts out, or some seeds. I put 10 fat balls out and filled the seeds at 5pm yesterday and it's empty this morning.

Feed your local bird pals if you can, it's so cold.

We have and for years , have a rope and pulley system with multiple feeders on seeds , suet pellets , fat balls , fat squares , a bird peanut butter jars in holders plus other with peanuts .
Have lots of birds in the garden including woodpeckers .
Hear buzzards & see them high up in the sky , hear owls at night . Love seeing and encouraging birds .

No. We have a cat; it would be cruel to lure them in.

@GiraLi it's lovely when you see them running for food isn't it! We have a husband and wife blackbird pair and they seem to know we're their feeder pals.

It's definitely the same pair as the male has a wonky foot so I always recognise him.

The only seeds I have ever had eaten are sunflower hearts, and they attract loads of goldfinches plus some tits who are lovely. Any other seed mix/fat balls just get ignored and go mouldy. No idea why!

Owls are great aren't they. I love them. We never see them, but we often hear them at night in our tree.

There's a deep voice one and a high voice one so we wonder if it's 2 different types or if some are young.

Yep. Full range of seed variety to fat balls. We get everything from pheasants, squirrels, and rats through to woodpeckers, yellowhammers, and nut hatches.

We've recently had blue tits. great tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, robins and nuthatch. They're wiping out the feeders in no time at the moment. We sometimes get woodpeckers but haven't seen them yet this winter. Also the occasional squirrel but they don't seem to stay too long.

This is so nice, thanks everyone for replying. Nice to have a happy bird thread amongst all the awful threads about everything going wrong in the world.

How old is everyone on this thread? I often talk about birds and have this piss taken out of me amongst friends for having an old person hobby, I'm 40 but I love birds.

Not that I know of tbh! Lots of dogs?

@Ilovemyshed I do all these things as well. I have 3 gardens, front back and a side garden that is the combined length of my front garden and house. I can't make "holes in my fence" as I have a walled back garden but honestly, stop assuming things about posters from one thread. This was about feeding birds which I do, but that side garden has an 8ft tall mixed native hedge and I have trees and bushes that have berries and seed heads. We have a local hedgehog rescue for those that are injured; she gives out useful information too on our local facebook.

@mysarahlee Dh calls me a Disney princess because birds come so close to me when I am in the garden. I honestly feel if I worked at it I could get them to feed from my hand. They also sunbathe when it is sunny, mainly the blackbirds, I thought it was injured the first time I saw it with its wings spread out. Robins also sunbathe, it is adorable. The bathing they all do in the water bath is just lovely. They queue when well behaved or flap at one another to get another bird out.

It’s a small lawn but the bird feeder is right beside the hedge…I’ve stopped DH from cutting it so it is big and bushy as figured that would be more appealing to birds to have a sit in? Then on other side of hedge neighbours have a wee tree.

I no longer feed the birds as it was attracting vermin and I've a phobia about vermin! If I could not attract them I'd definitely feed the birds.

I live next to some woods, so I feed and water everything. I feed out the front and back of the house and have everything from robins, great tits, blue tits, finches, nuthatches all the way up to blackbirds, jays, magpies, pigeons and crows. One of whom is lookout and sits on a tall tree and starts cawing it's head off when I appear to alert everyone that the buffet is about to open. I also have about 30-40 squirrels. I feed split peanuts, peanut granules and suet boost tidy garden. I gave up with fat & suet balls as the squirrels would take the whole thing! I feed in feeders, (bird and squirrel) and on the ground. The jay loves the nuts out of the squirrel feeder!

In the evenings after it has gone dark I go out and put food out for the badgers and foxes...

Costs me about £150 a month to keep everyone fed, but I don't often have my hair done, never have my nails done and watching all the squirrels and birds mixing in a morning and the foxes and badgers on the camera at night makes me so happy!💖

We live in a red squirrel area and have a couple of squirrel feeders in our trees . Come the autumn used to watch them emptying the feeder and burying the hazelnuts in them .
Sadly no visitors this autumn , and no sightings so far inspire of the weather so dear it is no more

I meant burying the nuts in the garden !

I used to, and loved seeing all the birds - we used to get goldfinches, nuthatches, jays and once we had a white starling.
Then the house next door was replaced by flats, with a bin store right next to our fence and the rats moved in, so we had to stop 😞

Melted lard and powdered pea protein, made into balls has gone down a storm this year.

They are currently on tinned dog food though. It goes so fast in this weather.

Nope I have three cats. I’m not encouraging birds!

I feed the squirrels and the birds, we have a magpie, jay, a robin and a big fat male squirrel that are daily visitors

I'm literally waiting for the kettle to boil to defrost the bird water.

I've been putting sunflower seeds out but they are being ignored. The birds are clearly pissed off I didn't get organised and grow big sunflower heads for them last summer. They usually pick them from the dead heads in the depths of winter.

You need to get one of those 'slow down' dog bowls, so that it takes them longer to eat it. Or, leave the tin out with a tin opener. That tends to slow them down I find, but the jackdaws learn fast and will often take the tin openers to steal cars later.

Oooo sunflowers. I didn't think of that. Plan for this year. Loads of sunflower heads.

I do all that thanks, at home and the allotment, but like having a few bird feeders too.

Always, I factor in their food with my pet food budget 😆♥️

I’ve been out with the kettle and topped up the water bowls. I’m going to put out something for the blackbirds now.