To feed and water the birds in this weather?

[notMarlene]

Much as I like to have birds in the garden I don't encourage then - we have cats it would be like opening a feline snack bar.

Some filthy seagull dropped a piece of bread in my garden yesterday and the poor wee birds were all over it so I've put out some fat balls and water. AIBU?

Some cheap bird food is full of fillers. I've just to Bill Oddies food from Wilkinson and put it on the ground and in a feeder. It seems quite popular.

I did by some squirrel resistant food froma garden centre. It was expensive.

Well bugger me, ResolutelyCheeky so it is! Should've read the bumf more carefully!

Just as well as I only saw two chaffinches and a blue tit all day today, our tree is under 6" snow with nowhere to perch.

I buy 12kg sacks of food and tubs of 50 fat balls from Lidl when they have it in. Cheap and lasts for ages.

I think it's very important to feed our feathered friends. In the winter I turn our garden play frame into a bird feeding station by removing all the swings/trapezes etc and then using the hooks to hang up all my bird feeders. The platform at the top of the slide turns into a bird table and I also put a bowl of water up there for them.

We feed the birds all year round too. We have a cat who likes his food to come easily to him!!

The neighbours' cats all come to salivate but the feeds are up high so I've never seen any of them catch a bird.

YANBU.

NumericalMum have a look at this. I've not tried it because I quite like watching the squirrels but it's from the RSPB so should be good advice.

Sorry I think that went wrong here

Mmm, doesn't seem to work. Anyway, they say to put chilli powder in the seed. It deters the squirrels but doesn't affect the birds in any way. You put it in a bag and shake it up to avoid it flying around and getting in your eyes or whatever. Just google 'chilli powder in bird food' and you will see the RSPB page listed. HTH

Bird lovers, it is the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch weekend 26th/27th

www.rspb.org.uk/community/getinvolved/birdwatch/f/3711/t/91462.aspx

I bought my (late) housebound mum a bird table two years ago. It was a state of the art one, but she never had any birds because of the bastard crows,
When we cleared her house, I gave it to one of my neighbours and he gets hundreds of birds, I wish I could have kept it but my cats are murdering bastards

I buy the suet pellets - the Wilko ones are good, I find the insect ones the most popular flavour by far. They are a good source of energy for them.

I have those in a feeder and scatter some on the ground along with dried mealworms and peanut nibbles (tiny chunks of peanut) for the ground feeders.

Sooperdooper It took the birds in my garden ages to feed from mine. I was very forlorn thinking I (and my feeder) had been spurned, but they did venture over in the end.

My neighbour loves feeding them too and he has lots of trees (and therefore lots more cover) so he has about three of those enormous six-station ones and fat ball ones so I feel quite pleased they come to mine at all.(They probably wouldn't if it wasn't for the suet nibbles). We back onto open farmland/pasture so there are quite a lot of kestrels, buzzards, and the odd peregrine so they do have to be on the alert....

I have 2 bird feeders, and no birds!

Starting to think the solution is to get a cat from these posts, then they'll be flocking in!!

We have no birds in our (tiny) garden, but I went out and sprinkled all the left over peanuts and ground up meal worms from our previous attempts on the path near us. On my way back there were some very hungry sparrows already attacking it, so think the poor things must be really desperate.

We've got 2 fat filled coconut halves and a fat ball holder in our yard (only 3ft deep from the kitchen window). My cat is currently having an extended holiday at my DMs following DD's arrival (cat started being sick all over the house in protest), but there's loads of cats in our street which are always on the prowl.

Our record is 7 long-tailed tits and 2 coal tits in the space of 5 minutes. Yesterday, we realised we seem to have a family of Robins (2 adults, 2 juveniles) visiting as well. It's really nice to watch them from the kitchen and even at only 8 months, DD seems to enjoy watching them

We have Niger seed, normal feed, peanuts and also a really high quality bird suet thingy.

My cat sits in the front window likes she's watching tv when they all queue up, we've had around 14 house sparrows on the little cherry blossom tree where all our feeders are on a front small scrap of grass that is the front garden. Robin has also been lots everyday too. I love it. :)

I'd love to feed the birds. Before we got the cats we practically had a little bird sanctuary in the back garden. We cut back all the bushes etc before letting the cats out to discourage the birds from hanging about too much.

One of my cats kills to eat,the other kills to play. I would feel sick if I had bird feeders up and the cats got them. It's the circle of life I know but literally turning the birds into bait isn't right.

I might scout out the garden for a high place the cats can't get to. But even then I worry the birds will sit on the wall after having a feed. Suppose bells on the cats would be helpful.

milk jug bird feeder easy