To feed the birds on my apartment balcony?

[HighJinx]

I live in an apartment that has a balcony overlooking a large garden area. This was one of the main reasons for choosing this flat as I don't want to live in the city and wanted as much green as possible. I also wanted to feed the birds. DH and I get a great deal of pleasure watching the birds come for food and in summer they bring their young to feed.

We have done this for a year without any problem but now have new neighbours upstairs. Their balcony is more of a roof terrace and set back so they actually overlook our balcony.

They say that on the edge of their balcony there is a lot of bird shit and they have asked us to stop feeding the birds in the summer.

I don't want to fall out with the neighbours and we probably will stop until later in the year (although I'm not sure when we will be allowed to start again) but I feel that they aren't perfect either. One of them hangs over the wall smoking so it feel like he is looming over us when we sit on the balcony.

So AIBU to feed the birds even if he has a bit of bird shit on the edge of his balcony or not?

YANBU as far as I am concerned. I would advise putting down seeds and fat balls rather than scraps of food as I would prefer to encourage small birds rather than seagulls and magpies, and they make less mess.

BTW, you can buy green spiky stripping that your neighbours could put along the edge of their balcony to discourage the birds from landing there. It won't affect them landing and feeding on your balcony.

Thanks Justforlaughs

We only put out seeds and nuts. Mainly we get sparrows, blue tits and great tits. The pigeons come to scavenge for dropped seeds but no magpies or gulls.

I think the pigeons are probably the problem but they like sitting on the top of buildings so might be there anyway.

Anti-Pigeon spikes are a good idea

I'd get him to put up pigeon spikes if he doesn't like birds on his balcony

Don't stop feeding them. They can put that spiky thing on their ledge if it's bothering them. I think generally the rspb advise you keep a food source constant, as the birds and their babies come to depend on it don't they? (I could have dreamed that, but think its true)

The smoking thing is far more annoying.

I'd be pissed off if I had pidgeons on my balcony (assuming that I had a balcony ) they are filthy, but anti pidgeon spikes should solve the problem. They aren't expensive and as a gesture of goodwill you could offer to buy a couple.

I think the smoking thing is more annoying too Monty but I let it go because we are in a city with lots of people in a small space so I think you need to be a bit tolerant of others.

I think that is what has riled me most actually, it's not really a problem that we feed the birds it's just their balcony isn't 'perfect' when we do.

It depends what you're putting down and which birds you're attracting. We're overrun by flying rats pigeons here and some twat was putting piles of rice on her window still for them. They were flocking around and fighting to get at it and knocking loads onto the ground to the point where I was expecting to start being overrun by ground-based rats as well.

As we've just paid extortionate amounts of money to have the roof sealed to stop the bloody pigeons getting in to nest in there she was told to stop pretty bloody quickly by our management company.