Feeding the birds

[wellinghall]

[Poll #1296095]

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I would do, but since I have two cats and a small garden, it seems a bit unfair to the birds to entice them onto my cats' dinner table.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

We don't have cats, but the street has several, so this is a more legitimate reason than previous one, which was lack of organisation & money. However, our garden is a haven for wildlife anyway most of the year, including a fine tree that is nested in, and a nesting box and lots of long grass with insects and worms and so on, and the lady next door does a major job of putting out feeders while her more trimmed and pruned garden isn't quite so wildlife friendly, so i won't change that anytime soon.

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

Ditto at Wome.

At Yome, the nice people next door feed a parliament of fowls. I do not believe there is a hungry bird on the Knavesmire.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

If I say that we're lucky we don't have a cat, I don't mean that at all; but it does enable us to feed the birds. There are a couple that occasionally wander through our garden, but none in either our house or (at least) the ones immediately to either side of us.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

We used to feed them successfully in our previous house, but the place we used as a bird feeder when we moved here proved to be unsuitable because it had too much cat-sized cover too close to the area where the hanging feeders dropped bits.

We would get a queue of birds waiting to use the feeders, and some birds (particularly the less agile ones - robins and sparrows) would start flying down to the ground under the feeders to hoover up the dropped bits, where they were too easily predated.

I have thought a few times that the solution to this might be a bird table structure that positioned a tray with good all-round lines of sight underneath the hanging feeders, with a rim to prevent the bits dropping off. Minor problem with that is keeping the tray bit appropriately sanitised for high-traffic use, as it would no doubt get very grubby. Also we don't really have anywhere to put such a thing, though perhaps on a house wall high up might work... One day I may experiment with this.

Another option I've considered is providing varying food in different locations around the garden seasonally: this would be a more natural feeding pattern and cleaner than having the birds all pile into one small area all the time, and would mean that the cats would not have one unchanging focus area to polish their skills in.

I don't actually mind losing the odd bird to a cat in that sort of scenario, because the bird population would be artificially inflated by the provision of extra food anyway, so there is a sort of balance. But the bird predation level was too high the way we did it before: now we've stopped feeding, the cats usually concentrate on mice, rats and rabbits, which I consider more acceptable prey.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I use a ready made seed mix that's RSPB/BOT approved, and fatballs from Poundstretcher

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

We used to hang up the product known, unfortunately to my mind, as fat balls, but the local birds completely disregarded them so they hung in the tree rotting. There are still a few in the shed, I believe. This was pre-NuCats, so it had nothing to do with them. We just have very pernickety birds in Bicester.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

I would love to put food out for birds, but we have a lot of squirrels here so it would have to be a proven squirrel-proof feeder, and I haven't acquired one yet. (We also have a lot of pigeons, but they eat fried chicken rather than respectable bird food so I doubt they'd be a problem.)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

We don't, largely because of our cats.

Of course, the cats themselves leave plenty of food out, but it's the sort of food that songbirds don't tend to go for, and the local buzzards aren't stupid enough to come into the garden for it.

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

I would put out food for the birds but (as so many others!)fear that the cat Samuel would view it as a tasty snacking opportunity. I do put out water when the ground freezes, though.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

It's probably also more important in urban and suburban areas than where we are (out in the country, with lots of trees and hedges).

Since we've been here though (we moved in in December 2000), there are some trends I've noticed. We don't seem to get anywhere near as many greenfinches or siskins as we used to. Or nuthatches come to think of it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That would be because we used to put sunflower seeds out. But then we decided not to any more so there is less incentive for them to come right up to the house where you see them.

[muninnhuginn]

Oh, I see, you might just have meant the wild birds as opposed to the really not so wild but very enthusiastic in a jumping up and down sort of a way hens.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Well possibly :-)

(But I am suitably amused by your comment anyway :-) )

[tree_and_leaf]

I should clarify: the 'leftovers' are apples which I haven't got round to eating and have gone a bit brown and yucky. The blackbirds love them nonetheless.

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

I feed only the hummingbirds, so sugar-water. Seed mixes would make too much mess for my close neighbors, but I should get a suet or other well-confined hanging feeder.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Nope, never had a hummingbird in our garden! (although I have seen them being fed in adaese's great-aunt's garden, in Carmel).

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

After reading the comments to this post I bought a suet feeder, too. I hope to find a source of suet rather than the packaged cake I got to start.

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

Don't have a garden as such, so nowhere to put hangers and fat balls, but I put bread out on the roof for them.

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

My 'other' is RSPB fatballs, some RSPB suet mix and, when I'm feeling generous, mealworms. These latter hardly last five minutes, so I only put them out as a treat. Oh, and water.

My main problem is the pesky squirrels. I have my seed feeder and nut feeder both enclosed in a cage that should keep the squirrels out!

[romancinger.livejournal.com]

I used to put stuff out now and again. These days, our garden is a haven for wildlife - even more than didius_julianus's - we have squirrels, and the occasional cat, but plenty of birds who feed on the great variety of seeds and insects!

[lalwendeboggart.livejournal.com]

No I daren't feed them as there are a couple of cats (not mine, they are indoor cats) that lurk and there's nowhere 'safe' to put food out. This doesn't stop the birds from helping the toads and frogs out with snail removal though - hurrah!

I have got a bird box though, in a cat proof spot. And we have: Chaffinches, Sparrows, a Blackbird couple, a Robin, a Thrush and some Blue Tits. Lots of trees around here, even though most gardens are tiny.

My mum is really phobic of flocks of birds but loves watching garden birds so she's a mad keen bird feeder and she has all sorts in her garden - I was impressed with the Goldfinches, very cute.