Where are the birds?

Normally as soon as I put the food out in the morning the starlings descend but they have been missing for weeks. The fat balls in the feeder haven't been touched, though we are still getting a variety of tits on the hanging feeder - when they can elbow the hordes of goldfinches out of the way. A blackbird comes and eats the berries and I guess once the visitors from Europe arrive we'll have loads of them again but generally the garden is much quieter than I would expect in this current cold snap.

At last some action in the garden!
Something was flying in my garden.
Yesterday evening the bird table flew into the bushes.
Very windy yesterday.

We have blue tits, coal tits, great tits, robin (who keeps chasing off another one), dunnock, long tailed tits, wood pigeons, magpies (swing off feeders and damage them!), nuthatch and a pair of squirrels! Resident blackbird nowhere to be seen but this happened last year as well and he reappeared in Spring. He has a song with individual phrases in it so I'm pretty sure it's the same one. I live in the suburbs of a large city but have lots of trees in the garden and am near parkland. Ideal. Love watching the birds.

We still have some sparrows,doves and a resident robin here in our garden. Havet seen blackbird or blue tits for ages, but no doubt they will be back at some point. Here is a picture i took the other day of the robin in our garden.

I have quite a good show of birds to the feeder. They always leave any corn that is in the feed. We also have the established fruit trees that encourage them. For several years we've had a couple of doves

Every evening at about 7.30 the geese fly over, I love to hear them. Then in the morning they fly back over again in the opposite direction. I

And yes, just persevere with the feeding, it takes a while for them to trust a new station.

Thanks for some great posts.
Still nothing on the bird front as yet.
I can't even see any flying around. The odd seagull.
No squirrels out there.
Have got a young fox taken to sleeping in the afternoon sun.

Last year I had great success with those blocks of bird feed. Very fatty suet type stuff. Local shop has fruit ones or nuts or insects the insect are horrid.
There have been fights amongst the birds to get a go. As a previous poster mentioned some birds were on the ground waiting for the crumbs to fall.
As of yet they aren't tempted this year.

I've got some bird peanut butter now. It's going out there tomorrow.
See if I can get them out of hiding.

Yes, thanks. Dumpling. I do work hard at it and the bushes are filling out. In my old garden I had a real variety including a woodpecker.. ( not even a squirrel or a magpie or a pigeon! )

Keep putting feed out*Lully*, especially fat balls. They’ll come when the weather turns bad and the berries have all gone. Is there water nearby? I think the birds come to our garden mainly because we have a small water fall and pond. They love to bathe in running water!

We are living in a new estate. The garden is small, square and surrounded by a brick wall. There is a walk and nature part all round the outside. It is full of bird unlike my poor little garden. Why would they bother? I do have a feeder, big bushes and will not give up. I get a lone wagtail and a lone robin.

The blackbirds are back! Well, several of them. We usually have half a dozen at least in our small town garden but most vanish during the summer, and jour have come back today. I think it's because the weather has just turned cold.

On the subject of new bird feeders, we bought new ones this spring. Posh easy clean ones from the RSPB, but the perches are a different style and it took nearly three weeks before the sparrows accepted them.

I have dozens of blue and great tits on the feeders; also a cheeky robin, sparrows, a couple of overweight pigeons and occasionally a nervous woodpecker, lots of geese overhead and swans on the nearby lakes so all well here in the Cotswolds

The birds seem pretty hungry this year - I had about 30 small birds queuing for their turn at the bird feeders in the lilac bush yesterday - mostly blue tits, sparrows and nut-hatches

I bought a pack of 3 blocks of bird food from the pound shop and the sparrows are going crazy for them, I can watch their antics from the kitchen window and they are so comical. There are always about 3 sparrows on the ground to catch any bits that are dropped. I love them, we get great tits nesting each Spring but at the moment the sparrows are stealing the show. My sister in Bristol says she never sees any sparrows there. So sad.

I've a bird feeding house new to the garden since Sunday.
Sometimes they will avoid something new until the smell of human has gone

Most of our sparrows seemed to have deserted us too - and there were at least two or three dozen of them in the hedge all summer.
I did notice three around the bird feeder the other day.

I wondered if this year's fledglings have flown away to find pastures new.

I saw a tree creeper the other day in the garden, that only happens occasionally!

Had a surprise this morning when a cormorant flew low over the garden.
We live on a coast road but that was a first.

The sparrows almost deafen me with their chirping at around 4 in the afternoon! Visiting the bird feeder. Actually, I had to move it because of rats, so I hope they like the new location. If not, I will put it back where it was and feed the rats too.

We had a fatality yesterday ... a pigeon flew into the living room window and killed itself! We're left with a ghostly white body and wings mark on the window and sadly the window cleaner has just been so it may stay there for a couple of weeks till he comes back!
We have our wee robin back though, and plenty other birds in the back garden where their food is. :-)

It's not just me they've abandoned then!

gmelon same here, although we have put out tasty treats for them, only a very few are interested, and one squirrel.
I think it’s because of the wonderful and unseasonal Autumn we are having, plenty of apples on the ground still and loads of berries on the trees and insects still around.
They will appear when the weather changes and it gets much colder.

Oh goodness gmelon, us too! Just the other day, I was commenting to my DH that our sparrows have either left us or something must be killing them off.

Normally, it's not uncommon to see dozens of sparrows in our garden and all manner of birds throughout the year, since we are backed by woods.

I've noticed that in the last month or so, the sparrows are down to one or two sightings a day, at best.

I haven't seen my bluetits or robin for a little while. Still pigeons and magpies around though.

It's completely normal for garden birds to be scarce at this time of year. Late summer and early autumn is the time of year after the breeding season is over, that birds moult and grow their winter plumage. Don't worty, they'll be back.
DH put up a new bird feeder in our garden and we've seen blue tits and great tits and a robin. They have been missing since nesting time.

I used to watch the birds in a tree the other side of my garden fence. But sometime while I was on holiday last month, it got cut down.
So now I only have seagulls and pigeons doing tap dances on my conservatory roof.:-(