I couldn’t find a suitable topic to put my query under so please feel free to move this if I’ve missed one!
I’ve never really put food out for birds - no idea why not but perhaps better late than never, What I could do with is some advice. When in Lidl a few weeks back I noticed they had a sort of green net with balls of bird food at intervals, alternately fat balls and peanuts. I hung a couple of these out of reach of the local cat empire and couldn’t believe how quickly they were eaten.
So my question is - what do you good people with experience put out for birds, when, and in what sort of feeder?
I use exactly the same, fat balls in netting that can be hung on branches. They dont last very long here either.
When we moved here, the previous owners left a few bird feeders, some were half coconut shells filled with fat and mealworms but I’ve not seen them anywhere here.
I removed netting religiously, but now I buy fat balls in quantity in plastic boxes, 35 to the box, nude of netting from SuperU. Would buy 50 if I could, they get eaten so quickly.
I’m appalled at the impact they are having in the UK. Years ago, I was on Richmond Common and the noise from these wretched birds was ghastly - drowning out any native bird sounds. I cannot understand why they are not being culled - or in fact completely eradicated - though I understand that’s virtually impossible.
We have 4 column feeders that we put black sunflower seeds in, & two fat ball dispensers. Such things can be found many places, but Action have/had feeders priced sensibly (you can pay stupid money for slightly twee models in gardens centres).
At present I refill things every couple of days, which focuses the mind on finding the best deals on seeds & balls.
We now have large quantities of bird life using our generosity. We regularly see charms of Goldfinches (up to 40 at a time), the blue tits & sparrows are ever present; robins, greenfinches, great tits are all regular sightings. There are also occasional wrens & last year’s big excitement was a migrating black redstart that dropped in for refuelling.
We are also very pleased to have occasional visits by squadrons (about 8) of long-tailed tits who monopolise the fat balls.
It’s a financial commitment, but there are certainly more expensive hobbies.
You could also try Gifi, Action, Lidl - they all tend to have them at some time during the year. Currently, not available in our local Action (run out and not replaced), or Lidl. On the whole, I prefer Action or Gifi, as they tend to have bird food/seed all year round.
My wife tried making her own coconut fat/bird seed netted half dome this year, which worked, kind of, until it got above 18°C one day and then the coconut fat slid out and down the tree we’d placed it in. Otherwise, we use fat balls in nets (and have never seen a bird caught up in them), a couple of wireframe column bird feeders filled with peanuts/sunflower seeds, and a little bird feeder house with a removable lid that we put mixed bird seed into.
When we stay with our lovely friend and landlady in her gite in the Lot, I usually take over the bird feeding for her. She buys a large sack of black sunflower seeds - 15kg I think which are fed to the birds in four large plastic dishes weighed down with a stone in each.
The food attracts large numbers of different birds. It’s interesting to see how most like to de-husk the seeds at the bowls while others take them to the trees. I was thinking of building a Raspberry Pi camera to observe our much smaller variety of garden birds at close range. I could take it with us.
. The ones from Leclerc dont come in the nets.
