Do You Feed Birds?

[mark smyth]

Do you feed the birds can come to your garden in the winter months? What do you use? Peanuts, sunflower hearts, fat balls, niger ...?

[mark smyth]

I use only nuts, in wire feeders, and nyger.

[Diane Clement]

Do you feed the birds can come to your garden in the winter months?

I stopped doing this some years ago because of problems with squirrels, mice, and occasionally rats.  We have a lot of berry- and seed-bearing shrubs and trees and are regularly visited by a wide range of birds.  We have a pond which birds drink from and I try and keep a section free of ice for them.

[Martinr]

Yep, we use peanuts, sunflower hearts (less mess than whole seeds), suet treat pellets and live mealie worms (we find everything but Starlings ignore the dead ones). We've finally got a set of feeders the squirrels have failed to master and we don't spread seed on the ground which seems to prevent the rat problems we've had in the past. Now if we could just stop Magpies attacking their reflection in the bedroom window at 5 am in summer all would be well.

[David Shaw]

We used to feed sunflower seed but found the black ones to be very messy as the husks built up on the garden. Then we moved over to sunflower hearts but these are expensive, even in 25Kg sacks, and our birds seem to like wasting a large portion of them.
This winter we have several peanut feeders  around. The birds ignore expensive fat balls but we tried them with much cheaper ones from Lidl and they really love these. This is all supplemented with food waste such as wholemeal bread waste, cheese rind and similar thrown on the ground as we don't have a rat problem. They also like cat food if the cats don't clean their dishes .

[Lesley Cox]

We (i.e. Roger) feeds out native birds with sugar and water solution and we've always done this, bellbirds, tuis and wax-eyes sipping from the tiny hole in upturned lemonade bottles. The birds used to feed during winter and spring but now they continue through the entire year and we've had many more bellbirds and tuis nesting in our trees as a result. This year we have a dozen pairs of tuis so the air is filled with sound like bells on Christmas Day! (or a Mozart clarinet concerto

We also put out cakes of nuts, bird seed, crumbs and dripping for wax-eyes and the smaller introduced birds - chaffinches, green and gold finches etc. Dunnocks eat bird seed scattered on the ground and goldfinches ADORE the seed from lavender bushes.

[Anthony Darby]

I must admit I've never heard of niger (also spelt nyger) but Googled it. Seems to be some sort of thistle? I used to feed birds but the waste attracted too many mice. A friend uses lard to feed woodpeckers. A neighbour over the hedge from my parents' former house plus 1 used to feed the birds with peanuts by the cwt! The year my sister got married (1984) coincided with the year our rockery was covered with seedling peanut plants! I blamed the squirrels wanting to hide their nuts, but a little observation revealed the culprits: coal tits!

[maggiepie]

I  have window bird feeders, mainly for chickadees  but we get pine siskins, evening grosbeaks,rose-breasted grosbeaks, goldfinches, sparrows and the odd bluejay and woodpecker manage to get seed.
I only use the black-oil sunflower seeds.
In Summer, I  have window feeders for the hummingbirds, the mix they get is half cup sugar to 2 cups of water.
I have never seen so many crows as there are in this province.

Btw, I read somewhere that black-oil sunflower seed hulls are toxic to plant life so I don't have any feeders near my garden

[Anthony Darby]

Btw, I read somewhere that black-oil sunflower seed hulls are toxic to plant life so I don't have any feeders near my garden

I must remember that, as it would make a good biology project.

[Tony Willis]

I feed with sunflower seeds ,peanuts fatballs and homemade fatcakes with seed and fruit in it.Also bread but only in the morning when it is eaten before dark.I tried the nyger seed and it was a waste of time as is ordinary bird seed.
Last year I did have a rat eating the seed in the ground feeder which looked quite nice but did not tell Mrs W.

This has been our best year ever for birds. We normally find that by the end of October they all disappear for the winter,something our neighbour also has noticed.At the moment we have greenfinches,bullfinches goldfinches and several tits,great,blue,and coal. A flock of starlings(12) blackbirds (10) wood pidgeons,doves,jays,a thrush  and a woodpecker. Also numerous brown things we cannot identify.

[mark smyth]

I would love to have grosbeaks come to the garden. Can I swap you some starlings?

[Anthony Darby]

I think we've already given them starlings Mark? What is the UK equivalent of the grosbeak? Hawfinch? Crossbill?

[maggiepie]

I would love to have grosbeaks come to the garden. Can I swap you some starlings?

If you can get Paul to send me some Australian maggies, you can have some grosbeaks.

[mark smyth]

Helen you can't insult them like that  You'res are stunning. They're finches and like Anthony says in the same family as our hawfinch

[maggiepie]

Australian magpies are the best birds ever
I miss them so much, and the pied butcherbirds, they have the most glorious harmonics.