Do you feed the wildlife in your garden?

[morelippy]

We've fed the birds for several years.. a mix of sunflower hearts, seeds, fat balls etc and have been rewarded with lots of birds and their young to watch. We also have 2 birdbaths were constantly filling.

We've recently started feeding hedgehogs and watching them on a camera, they've also become daily (well nightly) visitors.

We are also getting a fox now who likes the hedgehog food. I don't plan on laying on a fox buffet but just wondered if I should be discouraging him ( which means no supper for the hogs I guess)

Sorry not exactly 'gardening' but seemed the best fit.

I put food out for the birds and we have a tiny pond which has a lonely toad in it 🐸

I've not seen any evidence of rats, I think we have a few mice under the shed, if I saw rats I'd rethink the feeder.

I feed our foxes. I've watched three generations of the same family grow up - they have very distinctive, beautiful faces. Our village has a lot of foxes and I can recognise 'our' foxes from a distance. My reasoning is, if I feed them twice a day, they don't bother to try and eat my neighbours' chickens. Works so far. They are gentle (to us - i'm sure they are ruthless in the wild). When our elderly cat wobbled out to inspect them while they ate, they let him get close and didn't threaten him.

I live in a flat with a communal garden. Fairly new neighbours put in a bird feeder, they feed squirrels and hedgehogs. We now have rats.

I used to have a big family of hogs come every night for food & water, 6-7 queuing every night, I loved it & I never missed a night. I did it for 2 years. Until my neighbour came & told me to stop because I’m attracting rats. He then came back & told me to stop feeding the birds.

So now I have to sneak peanuts out to the birds! There are definitely nests as I found egs shells on my lawn & there’s a lovely robin that sits on the top of our spring ball pole every day.

So I've been feeding the birds for a while now, fat balls, seeds and topping up water. Kept going outside to find food empty within hours or the bird feeder open. Convinced myself it must be squirrels so bought a fort knox type anti squirrel bird feeder to find a rat come out from underneath our decking to take all of the food!! That was enough to make me stop. I'll put a few bits out in the winter months but I'm not risking it now!

We had hogs then a rat, I kept moving the hog food and eventually the rat thought sod this and left, rats don't like continuous movement of food. I used a lidded storage box cut a hole in and added some plastic strips. Works a treat!

Plastic strips at the entrance I mean like a curtain, hogs happily in and out nothing else able to get in.

I've actually just bought some bird seed today as we've got a hanging bird feeder which has gone untouched for about 10 years, just sat there forgotten about. The other day we saw a pigeon on the fence practically empty it and he must have told his friends 🤣 as had a couple of others come and finish it off.
Made me wonder if they were more hungry than usual this year so bought some to refill.

We have hedgehogs, they don't live in our gardens but use the hedgehog holes in the fences to travel through and come to our hedgehog feeder. I feed a mix of hedgehog food and puppy food.
As I had major garden works this year, my old small wildlife pond has been replaced with a much larger one. It has a pebble beach on one side to allow easy entrance and safe exit for small creatures. The hedgehogs stand on the beach and drink, just like I hoped they would.
I have bird feeders but very aggressive jackdaws who tend to chase off small birds. Wood pigeons still come though.

I have a small nut feeder for the squirrels which they love. I'd rather have squirrels than jackdaws.

In the pond I have frogs, newts, pond snails, water boatmen, damselflies, pond skaters. This week I have found some tiny baby newts which means they've started breeding again after the disruption of the new pond building. I never get frogspawn though although I do see adult frogs.

Before the major garden works I used to have a rat problem in an old shed. Hopefully the rebuild has solved this, haven't seen any rats since and the old wooden decking they used to live under has gone.

We no longer put out bird feed in the garden as we have had an influx of seagulls and they take it all and also shot everywhere and destroy stuff in the garden. They cause mayhem!

We now take bird feed to places where we walk the dogs in the countryside for the birds.

only just got a bird feeder, after giving up due to rats

so a fat ball which needs constantly filling up, and a plate of water,
which they love.
sparrows, wood pigeons, wren, blackbird

I love feeding the birds in our garden. I use mixed seeds, sunflower hearts, plus suet balls and blocks. The starlings scoff the suet balls, finches (and squirrels) enjoy the sunflower hearts and the blue tits and sparrows like the mixed seeds.

I also put out seeds on the ground. We have a pretty pair of collared doves who enjoy that.

I recommend the Merlin app if you want to know which birds are visiting your garden. I left my phone propped by my window the other afternoon, whilst I was working, and it was astonishing to realise the variety of birds outside.

I find watching the birds really calming. This has rubbed off on my boys, who both have special needs and significant challenges. Sometimes, we all sit and watch the birds together. And my younger son has now bought some binoculars so we can see the birds close up.

We feed the birds, and by default the rats. We live next door to a horse paddock so got rats anyway. Sends our dogs mental and I caught my dog looking at a corner all day by the fence waiting for the rat, only for the rat to walk straight past him ontop of the fence. So much for the terrier instinct

We’ve recently put a pond in and it started attracting more wildlife before it was even finished.

We usually have bird seed, fat balls, and chicken water dispensers out in the garden.

Few bird boxes, and most recently a ladybug house which I didn’t even know was a thing.

We had a hedgehog last year which we know because DH saw it in the day in a heatwave. So we put food out for him last year and probably should this year. Got some brill videos of him - and a rat 🙃 and a frog and a mouse too.

So the pond has a hedgehog ramp in case the hedgehog is still around.

Also the birds are OBSESSED with the pile of earth which is still hanging round from digging the pond. I’ve never seen a bird in the bird bath but they absolutely love a dirt bath!! About 10 of them rolling around in there every evening 😍

3 bells each or 3 between 2?

3 bells each. Lol