Are these birds taking the piss?

[Serin]

We feed the birds but if feels like the little buggers are coming from miles around to eat at our table. Flocks and flocks of them, more every day.
Today at 8.30am I filled a large feeder with RSPB approved peanuts and it is already half empty.
I also put chopped apple and pear out for the thrushes.
I dont want them to starve but does anyone have any idea of what I can safely feed them that doesn't cost a fortune?
A budget meal plan?
Like lentils??

Wowzers

I’m up north and would think I was on acid if I saw a parakeet in my garden

They do look a bit odd when it snows.

@Apple23 I work in a special school on the same campus as a larger mainstream secondary school. Every day, after the other school have finished lunch (usually a lot of the kids there eat outside), a huge flock of seagulls descend to hoover up leftovers (I'm in the Midlands - about as far away from the sea as you get in the UK!). There are also a fair few resident crows who get very annoyed with the gulls encroaching on their territory (today we witnessed a midair scrap between crow and gulls). Must be a school thing 🤷

As has already been said, if you’re not getting birds, don’t give up!
It takes time, firstly for the birds to actually notice the food you’re putting out and then to trust it, as a safe place for one and as a reliable source for two.
It took nearly 6 months for us to get a decent wing fall on our feeders and we had to reposition them several times within that time.

On another note, please remember to clean your feeders regularly. Don’t just top them up. Clean them in water that’s as hot as you can stand, at least weekly (if they stay full that long), preferably with the addition of a bird friendly cleaner (we use F10). Make sure to discard any feed that’s damp, or mouldy.

Lard costs about 40p and can be filled in coconut shells and mixed with seed etc.My garden birds give us a lot of joy, we love feeding them.

The parakeets were reportedly released pets, mainly during the 70’s. They adapted remarkably well to our climate and have successfully bred in the wild, to the point where they have become a nuisance. Here, they have been coined ‘The Kent Pigeon’.

No fancy expensive foods used here. Meal left overs, chicken carcasses, peanuts and home made fat balls. We are inundated with all sorts of birds tits (of all sorts), starlings, swallows, wrens, woodpeckers, dunnocks, blackbirds, robins, crows, dove however we are on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Ive even known the buzzards and red kites to hover around for a quick fix

It took 2 years to get rid of them although I really would like to feed the Robins. Any ideas?

Get a standard bird table, one with a floor, a roof and four posts at the corners. Wrap a 'curtain' of chicken wire round the posts to make a wall. Only the little birds can get through, the pigeons (and magpies and doves etc) can't and soon give up and stop coming.

(Robins are supposedly ground feeders but happily go on the table.)

When we started feeding the birds a few years ago we had the same problem with starlings they were like a plague of locusts literally clearing everything from the feeders on a daily basis. The noise was unbearable, worse than school kick out time. I started following a fab Instagram page and have seen some great tips and ideas on attracting different birds and keeping the starlings down.

instagram.com/martinsbirdwatch?igshid=loxrj6ithdkx

😂 I feed the birds and the squirrels 🐿. The squirrels actually come up on the windowsill and knock on the kitchen widow for nuts 🥜. I feed them by hand. If I’m not in the kitchen, they come and knock on the dining room window...costing me a fortune in nuts! I wouldn’t have it any other way though....feel like a Snow White or Cinderella character with all the birds, squirrels, foxes etc coming to call for me 😂

You’re doing a good thing, wildlife needs all the help you can give! X

If you live within a 30 mile radius of that there London, you might get the odd ring-necked parakeet descending too......there is a separate colony in Lancashire.... www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/our-positions-and-casework/our-positions/species/invasive-non-native-species/ring-necked-parakeets/

Wood pigeons here learned to body slam bird feeders and eat what fell out. The crap they left on patio was gross. Squirrels also used to do heroic jump from a pot plant to get to it. I gave up in the end. 😟

Living on a narrowboat we get all sorts of birds around us but we leave herons, sparrows and kingfishers to fend for themselves but we will chuck out the leftovers to feed the ducks and swans. If we stay in 1 place for a while we get regulars who start knocking on the hatch for some cornflakes in the morning.

@ChopOrNot

Don't do what I did - which was leave a 10kg paper sack (still sealed) in the garage.

Sorry Chop but the ‘still sealed’ made me laugh, like sealed paper was going to stop mice!

We got a v friendly pigeon at the stables. Turned out to be a racing one so we contacted the owner who said they would come out and "get rid". Horrified so we kept him he got v fat and happy on stud mix he would sit and eat out the horses bowls
Also had a robin who would happily eat out my hand

A flock of parakeets have been living in Glasgow for years
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47911103

To deter magpies, I moved the bird table up against a hedge and put clematis net around the three exposed sides. The little birds can come in through the hedge and the magpies can't reach through the wire. I use feeders for sunflowers.

This is not appropriate for MN! You need to tweet it.

there's a massive flock of (very noisy) parakeets in Düsseldorf. The story is they escaped from Cologne zoo many years ago.

I'm going to drag my arse out of bed to Wilkos to buy bird food and filled coconut shells. There is a wooded area at the bottom of my road so I'm going to hang the fat balls & coconut shells off the trees there. I'll also put some in my garden as well and see what happens.

We need photos of the birds and bird food tables please. Thanks

I’m going to restock today too

And I too would like photos of bird attraction gadgets

I used to get loads of birds in the summer but I've been struggling for the last few months, I have a variety of food out- mealworms, sunflower hearts, fat balls, suet blocks, peanuts and normal seed but I don't seem to be able to attract hardly anything . What could I be doing wrong?

Here's mine

louisethedisease thanks for sharing, that looks very professional and organised. Much more nicer than my margarine tub filled with seeds I've shoved on top of bbp just now!