Wednesday 26 January 2022

To Feed the Birds or Not, That Was the Question........

........... I couldn't decide, because bird feeding was really Colin's thing. At the smallholding we had loads of wild birds and we fed all year round. Colin bought some mesh and made some huge feeders and we bought peanuts and wild bird seed mix in bulk from the same place that we got chicken and goat feed.

On the old blog I wrote about when he did the RSPB Great Garden Birdwatch in 2015..............

To do the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch Col wrapped up in extra layers and sat outside for a while and then came in and sat near the back door. He had put all our feeders in one area during the week so as to be able to see everything at once.
The amount he saw was incredible. I never see this many of anything at any one moment during one hour because I haven't got the patience to stay still long enough!


6 Blackbird, 24 plus Blue Tit, 1 Bullfinch, 1 Coal Tit, 10 Chaffinch, 4 Collared Dove, 4 Dunnock, 1 Fieldfare, 1 Goldfinch, 24 plus Great Tit, 2 Greenfinch, 2 Jackdaw, 1 Jay, 8 Longtail tit, 1 Magpie, 4 Robin, 1 House Sparrow, 1 Mistle Thrush, 2 Greater Spotted Woodpecker, 1 Green Woodpecker,
4 Wood Pigeon, 4 Wren, 1 Sparrow hawk.

(7 years later I still don't believe that list!)

I wish I still had pictures I took of a feeder completely covered with long-tailed tits but can't find it anywhere on my old blog.

We fed the birds at Clay Cottage too and I carried on for sometime after he died but never saw the variety we did at the smallholding.

Anyway, back to the here and now. From where my chair is in the living room I look out to the big Flowering Cherry and the evergreen Ceanothus and often see blue tits or a wren hoping about on them. I can't see over the fence to find out if the people in the garden behind me feed the birds or not and I didn't see any signs of the previous owners doing any bird feeding. 

After 9 months of living here and thinking about it, I finally sent for a feeding station complete with feeders, a stabiliser stand so it stays upright (unlike the one we had at Clay Cottage which kept falling over) and a small selection pack of different feeds to try and encourage the birds in, without the expense of buying 20kg of peanuts all at once.

I fixed the darn thing together (not straight-forward as some of the wing-nut fixings were too stiff to turn! and I had to find the WD40 and a pair of pliers) and put a little of everything in the feeders.



 Got back indoors and straight away there were 2........................Pigeons!  Huge fat pigeons who have no need of any feeding by me or anyone else as they are munching their way through an oil-seed rape field just up the road!
The pigeons were able to sit on the flat feeding dish so I moved it up and closer to under one of the hanging branches, I thought would make it difficult for them to get an easy landing, but no........ they were still able to land. I opened the window and shouted at them and a few minutes later they were back again.
I've moved the feeding station a bit closer to the tree where I'm still seeing the blue-tits but although a robin and a female blackbird visit the flat tray, the peanuts, seed feeders and the fat balls, which the birds went crazy for at Clay Cottage, are so far un-touched and that blasted pigeon is still filling his fat tummy!
 
Have to be hopeful.............
 
Back Tomorrow
Sue




 

28 comments:

  1. Dear Sue we had 3xactly that problem with exactly that kind of feeding station and had to remove the flat dishes or lose the lot to a plague of wood pigeons. We found that turning a mesh hanging basket upside down over each feeder allowed the small birds through but foiled the pigeons. It was fun to watch them clinging to the basket (which would tilt wildly under their weight) trying to reach the hanging feeder inside it.

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  2. I have the same problem. Two great bit, fat, well nourished pigeons and not a little bird in sight. Very annoying!
    xx

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  3. I think you'll have to remove the flat dishes to avoid pigeons ...
    good luck ;-)
    I leave in city, balcony on 4th flour, and I have to put old knitting needles in my flower pots to avoid them from coming sitting on my flowers and making their nest in it (found once a fresh egg between my geraniums ...)

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  4. The truly talented make it look so very easy. The rest of us suffer for it. I have given up blaming myself when I can't reproduce the magic that others find so easy.

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  5. We have or had a similar problem with a big pigeon here in our new house. We have moved the feeder to a bracket on the fence and enclosed it in mesh. It took a week or so but now the small birds have discovered us and have started to visit regularly.

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  6. My next door neighbours are great feeders and I get to watch from the window! I must say that they get a good selection of birds and many of them swoop in over my garden and relieve themselves on the way!

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  7. We inherited one of those style feeders with our house but our problem is squirrels! We have a lot of big protected trees in our close which are home to lots of squirrels - never see any birds!

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  8. We set up a bird feeding station a couple of months ago Alan keeps it fully stocked. Our biggest customers seem to be pigeons who peck at the fat balls and then drop them on the floor, where Mavis finds them and is in seventh heaven until we take it off her. Luckily she's good with a stern 'leave it' command if I spot what she's about to pick up now.

    The little birds don't seem to visit that often but they do have good feeding along the canal towpath where they live in the bushes and trees.

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  9. As ViDer says, you'll have to remove the flat dishes. Our feeder is similar but without dishes and the pigeons sometimes stand on the curved bits at the top but they can't reach anything. But they still get the bits that scatter on te ground. Starlings don't get much either. Only nice birds.

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  10. We have two normal feeders hanging from the same large bush and get plenty of birds including pigeons. Fortunately for us (but mainly the smaller birds, lol) the pigeons can't get up to the feeders as they are hanging in space so there is nowhere for the pigeons to land and stuff their beaks. We used to buy a variety of seeds, but we now only buy fat balls after we had an invasion of rats who came to feed on the seeds being dropped. The rats have now gone, thankfully. My husband is the one who knows the different types of birds, I only know the obvious, robin, blackbird and of course pigeon.

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  11. Is feeding birds actively encouraged in the UK……I suppose supplementing and helping them with extra foodstuffs during a hard winter is fine but doesn’t it discourage them from ‘finding their own’ during the rest of the year?

    Joan just mentioned the point I was going to raise…..do any of you have a problem with spilled seed and rats?

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    1. It is encouraged if you can. As a small country and so much of their habitat has been taken up for more housing estates and so many gardens paved or Astroturf-ed over, as well as hedges being pulled up in rural areas to make fields bigger for grazing or crops, we have to do something to keep our native species fed, especially in towns. I have never had a problem with rats but then I have a cat and a Jack Russell who would love a rat supper!!

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    2. We have at least 3 big brown rats around our bird table which is near a 6ft ivy covered wall, where the rats live. We get a wide variety of birds, inc. pigeons and starlings. The rats don't bother me - apparently you're never far from one anyway.

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    3. My Granddad, who was an avid birdwatcher/feeder and could recognise all manner of birds, even by their song, always used to say if you start feeding the birds, you have to keep doing it all the time, as they get used to the supplied feed and then get out of the habit of finding their own food. He also said you should feed different things at different times of the year.....carby foods when it was cold, seeds for protein to build strong bones and muscle in summer, but not seeds in spring as young fledglings could choke on them. How true all that was I don't know. Oh, and he said never forget to put water out.

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  12. Like you, I love to see a group of long tailed tits all feeding together. I've pretty well given up feeding birds because pigeons, crows, rooks and magpies keep the little birds away.

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  13. This gave me a good laugh Sue - sorry.

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  14. The previous people left a bird feeder like that, and also a T-shaped wooden one with hooks which I fit other feeders on so we have feeding areas front and back of the house. We have a dozen or more of Blue and Great Tits at any one time. Dunnocks, Robins, Blackbirds, Long Tailed Tits, Chaffinches, Bullfinches (my favourites along with the L-T Tits), Sparrows, Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, the Spiv-like Nuthatches, and in summer, Greenfinches. It's always busy and they get through quite a bit of food. We have Big Fat Pigeons too but they don't go near the feeders - think they are too stupid to have actually noticed them!! The Pheasants hoover up anything that falls on the ground and is missed by the smaller birds. I only use Sunflower seeds (usually the hearts - without their jackets) as less mess that way. The mixed seed has a lot of wheat in it which birds discard. Peanuts and fat balls/loose suet bits too.

    I hope you encourage some more interesting - and needy - birds than the Pigeons!

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  15. It can take time...they need to trust the food first and make sure it isn't some sort of trap! Once they find it I expect they'll be inviting all their cousins along for a feast too! x

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  16. We have a window feeder and last summer got a very determined red squirrel and chipmunks.

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  17. I don't put out the feeders anymore because the squirrels would come and eat it all up before any birds could get to it so I gave up.

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  18. I stopped feeding the birds because all I was feeding were the fat pigeons, loads of loud crows, a squirrel family and some mice. The wee birds weren't getting a look in despite trying different styles of feeders :-(

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  19. Bird feeding has many challenges. We do not have pigeons but We do have squirrels that can empty a feeder in record time. I like feeding the birds in the winter. The rest of the year, our Board of Health recommends removing feeders because they attract the black bear that roams our area. Also, all birds carry ticks. The ticks are active year around when the temperature is 40 degrees F. People have been known to get very sick from a tick bite. Lyme disease continues to challenge the medical community and is often difficult to treat.

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  20. We have that feeder and some overweight pigeons. I swear one of them was too stuffed to walk. It takes them some time to get used to it, but we've had dozens of sparrows on at various times. Good luck.

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  21. I'm so glad you have decided to feed the birds. I get only sparrows and buntings as I just hang some bird bells, but one naughty squirrel has figured out how to leap from a nearby tree to grab onto the bell. I only feed them in winter when the ground is snow covered.

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  22. Glad to see that you are feeding the birds again. All we get are sparrows and man those guys are getting fat. They go through the feed in less than a day.

    God bless.

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  23. I used to be mad at the interlopers, especially squirrels and such. I finally mellowed. Everyone has to eat.

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  24. What a wonderful lot of birds you and Col saw that one year!

    I love feeding the birds. I started a couple of years ago and I really enjoy seeing them. They are such characters to watch. Over the years they have brought me much joy

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  25. We've always fed the birds and are visited by many. However, we are not suppose to at the mo because of the wretched Avian Flu ! We really can't bring ourselves not to feed them, when they rely on us.
    Looks like you are in time for the Great British Birdwatch this weekend !

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