Is this the right place to talk about garden birds?

[MadGardenBirdLady]

I started feeding the wild birds during the cold spell earlier this year - which coincided with the last few weeks of DDogs life; he was PTS three weeks ago, leaving me without a pet for the first time in 26 years.

I have compensated by 'adopting' the garden birds - I feed them daily, there are now different feeders around the garden, I make sure the shallow area of the pond is clean for drinking and bathing, I put out fluff/hair for their nests, I browse websites like 'Wiggly Wigglers' looking at product ranges......and, this is where I fear I've gone too far.....I have begun to name them

Am I the only mad garden bird lady on MN?

Great post Harebell, I am still topping up the feeders and putting stuff out. It takes a lot of energy flying to our gardens for food, I feel I'm letting them down if I haven't left them something. Eggshells by the way should be crumbled and left out this time of year. The females need these to help create the shells for their chicks. I wondered why the birds were pinching the shells I'd put out to deter the slugs from me broad beans, so a quick google explained how essential they are. I put shells out on the bird table now.

I love feeding the birds in my garden.
I don't get many different ones just lots of sparrows and starlings a couple of pigeons and occasionally a blue tit.

Their most favourite thing at the moment is grated cheese.it goes really quickly.

I have a few wrinkly apples I was thinking about putting out. Will they eat them?

I saw some really lovely birds for the first time on my life this year. I live on the edge of the forest but had never seen these before : hawfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, jays, woodpeckers, the long tailed tits i agree are too beautiful, nuthatches, and dunnocks. And today my first green woodpecker pecking about in the long unmowed grass (the crocuses in the lawn need to top up their energy for next year)

Did you know that long-tailed tits travel in groups, watching out for each other and huddling together in the winter to stay warm. They are so thin and have so little body fat that they tend to freeze to death if they don’t do so. And if their brood fails, the parents use their energy to support the brood of other long-tailed tit parents, helping to ensure survival. Thought that was so sweet.

I feed the birds every day too, I top up feeders before it gets dark so the early morning callers don't miss out. We are visited every day by a beautiful dark, almost purple male pheasant and he always has 4-5 females with him, some are dark like him and others are much paler. We are lucky to have a visiting woodpecker pair and two tree creepers too.

@RightOnTheEdge Yes, the birds love apples. I find they eat them better if I hang the apples from a feeder than they do if I put the apples down on the ground though.

We have four bird feeders with nuts, seeds and fat balls and we are obsessed with our garden birds. If I see a squirrel on the feeder from my bedroom window I run downstairs to chase them away!

The goldfinches in my garden love sunflower hearts, and have abandoned the niger seed feeder completely.

I had a niger seed feeder in the garden for over a year and never saw a single goldfinch.
Then I started using sunflower hearts, instead of the usual mixed seeds, for general bird feeding and loads of goldfinches arrived to tuck in.
Last year they brought their babies. So funny to watch them learning how to use the feeders, trying to land on the perches and missing, or landing on top of another bird .

I’m also feeding the (red) squirrels this year - last autumn’s harvest was terrible so they are still very hungry. Walnuts I leave on the lawn are cracked open the next day. I am hoping that feeding them ( I have also seen them come for the sunflower seeds (in shell and without) ) they will leave birds nests alone and concentrate on their own brood. So, supporting the birds via another route. No idea if it will work but it makes sense.

Ok, this might sound a bit bonkers but can anyone remember how the noise of a woodpidgeon was described by a MNetter some years ago?

"My toe hurts, Betty. My toe hurts, Betty"
It's all I hear now, soooo annoying

Harebell, I envy you your red squirrels, haven't spotted one for years.
Monty my magpie has a wife! Spotted her today. They're nesting at the end of the garden. I know they have a bad press, but Monty in particular is stunning.

I love my ten minutes every morning in the greenhouse, coffee in hand, watching and listening to the birds. My little piece of calm amid the chaos.

Definitely not mad, I love my garden birds! We don’t have a big garden but we have a couple of small trees and the other day I spotted a tree creeper on on of them We mainly get bluetits, great tits, gold finches, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks with the odd more exciting visitor. Goldcrests have been my favourite of the fleeting visitors- such sweet little birds.

We’re quite high up so at this time of year I can hear curlews on the hill above when I’m putting the washing out. One of my favourite sounds ☺️

Ooooh I love my birds! I've started getting a pair of Jays in over the past few days and I've been so excited about them!

My Goldfinches just stick to the sunflower hearts, so do the Bullfinches and Greenfinches so I've stopped with the niger seeds.

I get a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on the insect filled suet type coconut thingy who is absolutely gorgeous.

I have a general mix feed that the Sparrows and Robins love and the Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves clean up below.

I also have fat balls and a fruity suet block loved by Blue Tits, Great Tits, Starlings, Wagtails and Siskins.

I do get other visitors but those are the main ones. I started just as a random thing to do and now I fill them up twice a day and can't miss it, I know they rely on me!

Jays are so pretty. And they act quite shy and retiring and graceful although they are known to raid the nests of others they love whole sunflower seeds (not hearts) and they love peanuts (monkey nut types, in shell 🥜) Although my books say not too many peanuts as they provide energy but no calcium, which leads to wonky chicks and thin eggshells.

I’ll have to get some sunflower seeds, will they feed on a feeder or only the ground? So far I’ve only seen them on the ground.

I hang fat cakes in coconut shells and put sunflower seeds in a feeder in our tree and get lots of tits visiting. We also get fat wood pigeons who I’m not so keen on because they hog the food and don’t let the tits near it. I try to put it on precarious branches that they are too fat for but they do all sorts of contortions to get to it. The other day they actually managed to knock a coconut onto the ground and were just smugly stuffing their faces till it was scraped clean.

I’ve only seen my jays feeding for the ground, extremely cautiously. If you put out whole sunflower seeds (in shells) the wood pigeons can’t eat these and will not gobble the lot.

I love feeding the birds too. We only get Sparrows, Robins, Collared doves and Blackbirds though We did get a few long tailed tits visit when we had the snow but not seen them since.

Snugglepiggy I too put niger seed out to attract goldfinches unsuccessfully. It wasn't til I started putting out sunflower hearts that I started seeing them on my feeders, and now I get them regularly. In my experience birds don't like niger seeds that much- they end up going mouldy in the feeders.

Cary2012 that's a good tip about eggshells, I didn't know that but will start putting some out thanks!

We live in an estate and the garden was concreted over when we moved in, but there are loads of trees nearby. We get magpies, sparrows, have a couple of robins who visit every day, blackbirds, tits, wood pigeons. We put up a gated fence to hide the oil tank, and now they all perch up there and wait their turn for the feeders lol. It's so organised!

A few weeks ago we saw goldfinches for the first time...now I realise it was the sunflower hearts we put up...good to know.
It's lovely to see them all. My parents recently downsized and they miss their garden so much. They love looking at our birds when they're visiting.

Considering I have a cat, my next door neighbour has 5 cats and many others wander down the street or through gardens I get quite a lot in my small garden.

Black birds, robins, great tits, blue tits and some I have no idea what they are. I like to watch them but don't feed them because of the cats.

I also have a hedgehog visitor, but I have not seen her yet this year

Thanks harebell I’ll give it a go.

I love how they are all individuals too. You can read up on what birds like and how they feed and then you’ll see them doing something else. I have a male blackbird that flaps away trying to get his balance on the general mix feeder. The little birds watch him like they’re at a zoo

I have a couple of dogs who ignore the birds but it means cats aren’t a problem. Because of the area I live in I have to be careful for birds of prey, buzzards for example are often about but luckily so far the only ‘scary’ bird I get is the odd raven but the little birds don’t seem bothered and they tend to keep the magpies away. I’d thought the little ones would be scared but they’re not at all, they’ll hop about on the ground next to the raven. Crazy!

I love how they are all individuals too. You can read up on what birds like and how they feed and then you’ll see them doing something else.

I think I may have a genius male sparrow visiting my garden
He stands on the edge of tiny pond (half barrel sunk into ground) and repeatedly drops small snail into the water, gets it out and puts it on the edge for inspection then puts it into the pond again. Eventually he'll eat it and fly off leaving the bits of shell behind.
I've seen him do this on three occasions, am assuming its the same male sparrow but can't be absolutely sure of course.

Perhaps the repeated dunking makes it easier to get at the snail, but I find it amazing that he worked this out in his little sparrow brain.
I know thrushes will drop snails onto stones to crack the shells, but never heard of a sparrow dunking them in water.
Has anyone else come across this?

How curious MasonJar! That reminds me of how the heron catches frogs from our pond, then holds them by the leg and repeatedly dunks them in the water before finally gulping them down - I was told this is to wash off the unpleasant tasting liquid that frogs emit to repel predators. I wonder if snails give off something similar?

We have birds nesting in our birdbox. It's a 'sparrow terrace' which I bought specially for the house sparrows, because many of our neighbors have plastic soffits/facia boards now which prevent the birds from nesting in the eaves. However last year all I had in there was one family of blue tits! This year though a pair of sparrows have set up in the end compartment while the blue tits are back in the middle part like last year. There is still one empty compartment so I'm hoping some more sparrows nest in there. We have tons of house sparrows, even though they are a red status bird so quite endangered. They cost us a fortune in fat balls! (Hence my username )