Oh what joy!!
The passing of the summer and entering the colder darker nights,is, for most of us, a time that we look forward to with some trepidation and we long for those warm days to return in the spring- particularly us caravanners and motorhomers whose whole ethos is being on site enjoying the great outdoor!, but there is one thing that I enjoy throughout the darker colder months apart from the odd intrepid caravan trip. That is the wonderful sight of the garden birds busying themselves around the feeders that I prepare in September each year. What a sight to behold! I went through a phase where every visit to a garden centre seemed to turn up a new type of feeder or a better or bigger one than I had already. The result of all this frenzied buying was to end up with all shape, sizes and purposes of bird feeder. This year I even went onto Amazon and purchased 'bulk' seeds in the form of wild bird food, sunflower hearts, Niger seeds, nuggets for my nugget holders and so on. 25kgs of that 20kgs of this. Fairly expensive yes but oh so worth it. I have just had 9 goldfinches feeding all at the same time and bluetits, a coal tit a great tit, sparrows, robin etc What a display of colour! I am by no means a twitcher or even an ornithologist but wow- I do love my little friends!!!
Comments
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One of the joys of living in our wonderful land, Merve. We don't normally start feeding the little blighters until the beginning of November and am currently stocking up and giving all feeders another clean. You don't have to be an avid birder to enjoy whats
on your own doorstep and sometimes its these local birds and wildlife that give you the most pleasure.0 -
Me too! I have several Goldfinches about and seem to be a bit of a staging post for families of Long Tailed tits. They never stay long 2 or 3 days but are great to see. Loads of Sparrows, Blue tits, Robins, and Blackbirds and also the occasional black cap. Too many b***** magpies though. Counted no less than 10 in our short Cul De sac recently.
Wish I could encourage a Hedgehog!
TF
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It is surprising how quickly they get through that 25kg sack of mixed seeds. I can't afford to keep up with them on peanuts though .... they are an occaisonal treat!
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Me too! I have several Goldfinches about and seem to be a bit of a staging post for families of Long Tailed tits. They never stay long 2 or 3 days but are great to see. Loads of Sparrows, Blue tits, Robins, and Blackbirds and also the occasional black cap.
Too many b***** magpies though. Counted no less than 10 in our short Cul De sac recently.Wish I could encourage a Hedgehog!
TF
Write your comments here...Hi TF
we have hedghogs, frogs, collared doves and pigeons, but very few birds. We do see your magpies up in those rather large connifers. You can keep them if you don't mind.
just bought 2 more feeders hope these work better than the last choice. We are offering peanuts, sunflower hearts, wild bird seed, niger seeds, fat balls and meal worm.
Only takers are the pigeons.
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Me too! I have several Goldfinches about and seem to be a bit of a staging post for families of Long Tailed tits. They never stay long 2 or 3 days but are great to see. Loads of Sparrows, Blue tits, Robins, and Blackbirds and also the occasional black cap.
Too many b***** magpies though. Counted no less than 10 in our short Cul De sac recently.Wish I could encourage a Hedgehog!
TF
Write your comments here...Hi TF
we have hedghogs, frogs, collared doves and pigeons, but very few birds. We do see your magpies up in those rather large connifers. You can keep them if you don't mind.
just bought 2 more feeders hope these work better than the last choice. We are offering peanuts, sunflower hearts, wild bird seed, niger seeds, fat balls and meal worm.
Only takers are the pigeons.
BlueM, you're lucky. We've been home for a week now and I put out feeder, fat ball & stuffed coconut shell right away, and not had a single bird on them yet. It's very quiet in the hedges too, all I've heard, apart from the gulls, is an odd Robin.
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Me too! I have several Goldfinches about and seem to be a bit of a staging post for families of Long Tailed tits. They never stay long 2 or 3 days but are great to see. Loads of Sparrows, Blue tits, Robins, and Blackbirds and also the occasional black cap.
Too many b***** magpies though. Counted no less than 10 in our short Cul De sac recently.Wish I could encourage a Hedgehog!
TF
Write your comments here...Hi TF
we have hedghogs, frogs, collared doves and pigeons, but very few birds. We do see your magpies up in those rather large connifers. You can keep them if you don't mind.
just bought 2 more feeders hope these work better than the last choice. We are offering peanuts, sunflower hearts, wild bird seed, niger seeds, fat balls and meal worm.
Only takers are the pigeons.
BlueM, you're lucky. We've been home for a week now and I put out feeder, fat ball & stuffed coconut shell right away, and not had a single bird on them yet. It's very quiet in the hedges too, all I've heard, apart from the gulls, is an odd Robin.
Write your comments here...My wife was delighted earlier in the late spring when a Jay appeared twice a day for about a week, but was seen off by Tigerfishes magpies, not been back since.
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Strange, I have loads of Birds many varieties, but not a single Hedgehog for many years. Stopped using slug pellets many years ago due to fears about poisoning hedgehogs but it dosent seem to have helped.
TF
Write your comments here...Our hedgehog appears every evening for a drink from the pond.What an awful noise it makes too.
Perhaps that is the attraction, water.
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Could it be that so many gardens now have bird feeders out that the poor little things are overweight and cannot fly so far?
A bluetit recently tried to enter my newly erected nest box but found the hole to small, even though it was to RSPB spec.
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Could it be that so many gardens now have bird feeders out that the poor little things are overweight and cannot fly so far?
A bluetit recently tried to enter my newly erected nest box but found the hole to small, even though it was to RSPB spec.
You could be right Blue but I thought that was funny.I miss all our birds
we used to have a range of tweeters coming into our garden to feed but sadly 3 cats have moved in next door and the
birds are staying away...my gardens just not the same.0 -
We've got 2 fat snack feeders out at the moment I also put out a mix of seeds in the bird house and spread a good few handfuls on the ground for the ground feeders. Today I noticed the blue tits were very active flying back and forth. We also have coal tits,
chaffinch's, robins x 2, blackbirds, starlings, collared doves, sadly not seen a gold finch for a good few years.0 -
The birds in our garden are treated to a cooked breakfast every day - when we're at home that is. About 3 slices of bread shredded into small pieces and a good lump of lard, or left-over chicken juices if we haven't used that ourselves, in what we call the "bird-pan"; it all gets fried up and put on the birdtable. In no time there are loads of birds, initially mainly starlings, about 50 of them, then after they've gone and if there is a little left, blue tits and great tits. If we are a little late in serving breakfast, the starling won't be there right away, and the blue tits and great tits get theirs first.
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We've got 2 fat snack feeders out at the moment I also put out a mix of seeds in the bird house and spread a good few handfuls on the ground for the ground feeders. Today I noticed the blue tits were very active flying back and forth. We also have coal tits,
chaffinch's, robins x 2, blackbirds, starlings, collared doves, sadly not seen a gold finch for a good few years.So that's where they've all gone. Not had a single bird on my feeder etc since we came home a week last Wednesday.
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I feed the birds all year round, I have a bird table and a feeding station with hanging feeders also a bird bath between the two and a little further away a pond. On the bird table I put scraps and wildbird seed also fitted a suet block, the feeding station
has feeders containing njyer seed, sunflower hearts, wild bird seed, sunflower seeds and fat balls, there are times in the year when the feeding station/table are quiet but at the moment they are being used frequently, this lunch time I counted 14+ goldfinches
on the sunflower hearts and njyer feeders, we have resident dunnocks, blackbirds, wren, collared doves, wood pigeons and robin, we get visits most days from a flock of starlings, blue tits and great tits and occassionally greenfinches, chaffinches, magpies,
jackdaws, crows, jays and green woodpeckers, sparrows are rare visitors to the garden now although we have seen more of them this year than we have for years. We are now getting regular foraging visits from feral pigeons which we had never seen the garden
until folk started to have solar panels installed on their roofs, we have noticed that the feral pigeons seem to love these solar panels, we have observed them going underneath them to roost and even saw them taking nesting sticks in the gap between roof tile
and panel during the summer, has anyone else noticed this?We get a lot of pleasure from feeding our feathered friends
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Any pigeon would have to be a limbo dancer to get under my panels.
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We feed our birds throughout the year with peanuts, sunflower seeds, fat balls, dried meal worms and niger seed, but there does seem to be a decrease in bird activity. We used to see a Jay, Green Woodpecker, Long Tailed, Coal, Blue Tits, Green Finches, but
now just a few Gold Finches and a few Sparrows but we still get invaded by Starlings, they clear everything.0 -
Duly received and erected my new feeding station today, got soaked putting it up and securing it,but don't mind. 30mins after setting it up it was bombarded by about ten Starlings, they were also on the fat ball feeder in the small plum tree, nothing else seemed interested, hope to see more tomorrow. In the past we have seen long tailed and blue tits house sparrows and a pair of goldfinches as well as the scavenging starlings, blackbirds male and female and one little jenny wren......
PS... Also have a small nesting box which has been looked at by two or three tits but as yet no takers....
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Birds currently enjoying our windfall apples (brought in and stored all the decent ones!)
still to put up nest box and integral camera (a gift from youngest son) been told should do it soon as have been told birds like to investigate and become thoroughly familiar before they decide to take up residence
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We too feed the birds but have found that the numbers have been decreasing over time.
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