Birds in winter

[LIZS]

What do you feed them ? Have put out some nuts, seed and breadcrumbs and waiting for our mixture of lard, seeds adn breadcrumbs to set (recipe from one fo dd's reading books!) for "cake". The water tray has iced over though.

I just put mixed seed in one feeder and peanuts in the other. the sparrows and blackbirds loiter on the ground and get anything thats fallen

Thrushes, including Blackbirds and migrant Redwings and Fieldfares like apples and pears, cherries (as if!) plums etc. They don't seem to mind how bruised it is.

We smear fat/seed mix onto trees for Great spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch and Treecreepers.

Mealworms (if you can bear it) go down really well with most species.

if i put out anything i get magpies and pigeons. it' sort of sad

I feed them peanuts in a squirrelproof feeder, mixed seed (with some nyger added in) in a seed feeder, and by not deadheading the rosehips, lavender heads, end-of-season blackberries etc, and by not exterminating the insect and mollusc pests.

The people next door just leave the apples to fall off their tree and go rotten, which is good for blackbirds and thrushes - there was a fieldfare in their garden a few years back.

Great Spotted Woodpeckers love peanuts - several come to ours (well, I can't tell all the individuals apart, but I've seen male, female and juvenile).

To keep the magpies and pigeons away you need to use a bird seed feeder that hangs from a tree or stands on a pole. Little birds need very high calorie food, so breadcrumbs aren't best - fatballs and peanuts are great. I find my birds are very fussy abtou mixed seed and just chuck the boring stuff on the ground to get at the good bits, so i stick to hulled sunflower seed hearts. Goldfinches love them.

I have two huge 12-station birdfeeders from RSPB, plus two peanut feeders, plus a couple of fatballs. I also leave fruit to rot on the ground where it falls for the redwings and fieldfares. But longtailed tits are my favourites - sooooo cute

I think magpies are rather maligned - I saw one pick up a young rat in our garden last summer (not that I'm recommending putting out rats for the birds [wink})