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.

@BlueberryShortcakePixie

There are heated birdbaths for sale; makes it much easier

Just put food and water out for ours this morning - doves, tits, pigeons and a sparrow so far. Need to stock up on peanuts today! We get lots of birds and it’s lovely to watch them. Don’t think any of the houses round us put food out so we like to give them a feast!

The suet block I put out lower down for the robins did attract sparrows yesterday but has disappeared overnight! I think a fox had it

Still no birds coming to my feeder, but I'll keep trying. I saw a kingfisher on my walk today which was wonderful.

Have five feeders, two seed, one peanut, one fat ball and one containing suet pellets + meal worms. Been below freezing all day, birds have been very busy. Was using hairdryer 7.30 this morning to defrost any food left in feeders overnight.

My neighbour wondered what I was doing🤔

I've topped mine up again they are definitely hungry! Live watching them, I have lots of sparrows, some blue tits, starlings and a Robin visiting along with a few annoying pigeons

Made another batch of bird food

That's a brilliant idea!

I'm in a city centre but seem to have a good variety in my small garden. I top an ancient (broken) bird table every morning with different seeds, mealworms and nuts and have a couple of feeders hanging in a tree.

The squirrels do eat a lot of it but plenty left, and there's the odd magpie, jackdaw and Jay but mainly it's robins, great tits, coal tits, blue tits, dunnocks, blackbirds, and usually goldfinches (but haven't seen these for a while ) and of course pigeons.

I have read that birdfeeders are actually not great because they can spread disease and help common garden birds outcompete scarcer species.

Well definately don't feed them left over takeaway, a neighbour did that and it attracted rodents!😱

I have cats who hunt or I would absolutely put food out.

We do take food down to the local nature reserve and feed them though

Good point. Anyone not wanting to feed the birds because of your cats. Could you go on a regular walk to the woods/park or wherever and feed them? Especially in this cold weather. Every little helps.

Grey squirrels are an invasive species and are destructive if they get in your loft. They are not much better than rats really. They also are much hardier and have more food sources than small birds. I would not hurt them but I don’t want to encourage them. They are really good at looking after themselve. Little birds find it much harder and are declining in numbers.

Grey squirrels are considered to be vermin and are pushing out the red squirrel which is a native species to the UK. They also steal birds eggs. They are not nice!

I am! But I have to do it in the dead of night because my neighbour has been roun with a bit of ‘advice’ to stop feeding the birds because it attracts rats. So I wait until my DD & dog are fast asleep & I head out with a big bowl of peanuts & sunflower seeds & covertly scatter them where the neighbour can’t see! I don’t even mind if the squirrels get them, they have to eat too! There’s still thick snow here so when I take my DD sledging in the woods opposite my house tomorrow, I will also drop some fruits & nuts near where the robins hang out!

I would love to but neighbours down the street attracted rats instead 🫠

We had a lot of trouble with grey squirrels killing saplings and ultimately getting into the roofspace. Now with the benefit of hindsight they had significantly reduced birdlife too. We were seriously overrun with them. It seemed to be caused by a neighbour feeding them very generously! In areas without pine martens they have no predators and the population increases to the extent supported by the local food supply. Do bear this in mind if you start going out of your way to feed them.

Good for you! How wonderful of you to be kind to all creatures!!! 💐💐💐

Thanks for asking, @Talesfromtheriverbank! I already had 6 feet high fence panels so DP added another 4 feet of fairly see-through chicken wire fencing on top, with (legal) plastic spikes on top of the supporting posts to (a) additionally deter the outside cats from getting any 'purchase' to jump in; and (b) deter birds from landing on the fence in vulnerable spots - we want them to come and land directly in the safe garden (or our roof).

It's not particularly a thing of beauty, but it looks ok; and the only neighbours who mind are the ones with the killer Bengal-cross cats! And they seem to be most annoyed that their cats can't come into my garden and use it as a toilet/playground any more. Idiots. (Their own garden is one big mass of concrete. Mine is flower beds, mini vegetable patches, pots, and small trees.)

It was worth the £200-300 or so to have the peace of mind and get our garden back, tbh. We also had to protect our own two elderly cats (they were too sluggish to bother with birds, god love them).

Fatballs are like crack for starlings. No one else gets a chance. I put out small ones, in irregular intervals. That way starlings finish, move on and small birds get a chance with new one.
When the starlings spot me hanging new ones, it feels like Hitchcock movie...😂

Thanks. I’m in an ongoing stand off about next door’s Bengal. They went ballistic when I mentioned putting spikes on fence. My fence! The positions of our sheds doesn’t help as they jump across.

I find Spring particularly traumatic as this killer cat wreaks havoc in his own garden and beyond. Horrible to see. I chase it when I see it.

so I’m torn between feeding the birds or not in case I set them up as cat bait! Used to have a lot more until the cat arrived.

We’ve got a flock of sparrows in the hedge, noisy chatty little buggers I feed them. There’s a robin who comes right up to the window if I haven’t put out mealie worms.

I love watching them all queuing for the bird bath.

The goldfinch eat the verbena bonaseris (so?) seeds and teasels. And some grasses too.

we bought a finches friend bird feeder as it’s easier to keep clean.

we also have a rat who tries to help himself but I’m loath to do anything about him, but I tend not to ground feed because of him and also have a net underneath the feeder to try and catch fallen seed.

Has anyone tried the roller fence toppers against cats?

Also, sparrows LOVE dry worms. They wkll be vety willing to come right to people after fee times tasting them

Just had a sparrowhawk on our fence. Food must be scarce for them too!