The birds ain’t coming.

You just have to wait. The birds will come eventually.

Sago
I feel your pain ☹️ Like you we have tried everything.
I think between us we’ve kept the mealworm industry going.

Similar problem Sago in fact they fly over our garden to go next door, I think our problem is next door have small trees, we don’t. So, I’ve put in a small Cherry and crab apple but think I’ll be waiting a goodly while.

About 10 years ago, I bought a feeder for DH's garden at his home in France. Throughout the entire fortnight I was staying with him, I kept looking to see if any birds would come but no. Soon after I returned home to England, they started to frequent it and now we see all sorts of birds! If it’s any comfort, Sago, French birds are equally slow to notice a new place to dine!!

It takes time, but they will come. They need to find your feeding station and that it is a regular source of food.

Also, putting your bird table up now, you are putting it up when there is abundant wild food for birds, so they are less dependent on bird tables

I did see a news item this week from a group like thr RSPB reckomending that we do not feed birds at brid tabless in the summer because birds are loosing their ability to forage in the wild for food and this threatening their ability to survive in hard times.

Not wishing to rain on your parade, and like you I spend a fortune feeding the birds, but more and more I am reading that feeding birds is bringing with it problems.

First if you look the RSBP is no longer selling bird house feeders, because of the disease transmission that is being passed from bird to bird, and secondly feeders are now thought to help certain species at the expense of the tinies, like the ones you mention.

So I have got rid of my tables, but still use feeders. But am giving it thought, and may well fade them out after some more research.

We still get a lot but different ones now. I have a suspicion someone has been killing the ravens and the miner birds, they have totally disappeared ( we used to get a loads) I don’t care because now we get more little tiny honeyeaters and rosellas plus the usual magpies and wattle birds. I have stopped feeding them because we also started to get rats, great big ones,too.

I think that the trick is to do as my son does and ensure that your garden is as wild life friendly as possible. So he grows masses of wild flowers for pollinators which in turn feed the birds during the winter. He also has trees that host caterpillars etc and of course shrubs etc that host aphids, The ground feeders get dug over earth and an area of shortish lawn. He has 3 ponds and nesting sites.

Works for him and the variety of birds are a sight to behold!

Did I not read that you had only recently moved? It takes time to encourage birds to visit.

They will currently have young to feed, may already have places they know they can find food. They don’t want to travel any further afield than necessary, leaving the nest vulnerable to predators.

Jackdaws are predators of small birds and very clever. They will seek out nests to predate. Small birds visiting feeders regularly at this time of year could signal that nests are nearby. The jackdaw could be why smaller birds are staying away.

I'm wondering whether the position of the feeding station is too exposed. My most popular feeders are the ones I hide in quite dense shrubbery where the birds can feed and have some cover from the local sparrowhawk.

Bits of fat rubbed onto branches and into branch intersections of trees and shrubs will be welcomed. Watch how different birds like to feed and adapt your feeding regime to that. I find suet balls or blocks crumbled and small pieces hidden away are more popular than suet balls or blocks suspended in a feeders.

Also remember that chicks need soft food. At this time of year, bird parents may prefer a bit of garden roughly dug over to reveal worms and insects rather than seeds and nuts. Robins, blackbirds and thrushes certainly will.

Make sure you provide water as well as food including somewhere for them to bathe.

It takes a little while for the birds to find and feel comfortable with your set up. In a couple of weeks it might be a very different story.

I have a similar set up to Whitewavemark2's son. Wildlife friendly - wild flowers, trees, shrubs, ponds, several bird baths at different levels.

The single biggest factor in attracting birds is cover - so hanging the feeders under a tree brings out the little, more nervous song birds.

As I write I have blackbirds, great tits, a robin, blue tits and kerfuffle of sparrows around the feeders. It's taken me a year or more to build up to this.

Every time I fill the feeders I wash them in disinfectant and rinse throughly and change the water every day, scrubbing the bird baths first in an attempt to avoid the diseases we read about.

Oh, one more tip - mealworms seem to be all the bird's favourites, so perhaps add those to your feeders. If I put them in a bowl on my potting bench with a little water they go like hot cakes - I guess they're nice and soft then for feeding to chicks.

Interesting thread! I have the same problem and after four years in a cottage style but coastal garden I’ve all but given up.

The garden next door used to be overgrown with large trees that were much loved by magpies. Not a small bird in sight. The new neighbours have cleared the trees and left the shrubs but they have a cat!

My planting is as wildlife friendly as possible but I’ve given up with a feeding station.

I occasionally put out scraps for the birds and they always clear them in no time.
I also made a bird bath and I have all sorts coming for a drink and a full on bath. It's great to watch them.

I’m surrounded by trees and am forever sweeping up leaves but instead of putting them in the compost bin I try to leave them in piles at the edge of the lawn so the birds can forage for insects in them. I have mealworms out but the robins aren’t touching them. I bought some special Robin food for my nesting Robin but it’s the pigeons that seem to be eating it. The blackbirds love apple. I feel guilty in that I didn’t put any out for them yesterday. What disinfectant should I clean the feeders with?Not that I’m putting any food in them at the moment. At my partners the Sparrowhawk hides in the hedge next to the bird feeder so it can ambush them. I do feed the Rooks any food scraps. Although I spoke to someone who was educating people about ground nesting birds and he said I shouldn’t really be feeding them. I do love to watch them, though, and they come down as soon as I call them.

The RSPB recommends Ark-Klens for bird baths and feeders:

shopping.rspb.org.uk/bird-feeders-boxes-tables/bird-care-accessories/bird-safety-hygiene/ark-klens-cleanser-ready-to-use-spray-bottle.html

I had visions of it being the ornithological equivalent of a Gordon Ramsay opening night, it’s more like a boarded up McDonald’s on an industrial estate.
😁

It does take time for them to find you and sometimes, when the feeders have been refilled, they avoid them for a day; DH thinks it's because they can smell humans.

I've bought sunflower hearts and niger seeds in the hope of attracting tits and other small birds but no luck. They fly over and sometimes perch on small bushes to eat the insects.

The sparrows seem to love just the ordinary mixed seed and ths mealworms which the robin likes too.
Blackbirds are ground feeders.

However, we don't seem to see the numbers of small birds now, more crows, pigeons and magpies.
There's a sparrow hawk around somewhere too.

Whitewavemark2

I think that the trick is to do as my son does and ensure that your garden is as wild life friendly as possible. So he grows masses of wild flowers for pollinators which in turn feed the birds during the winter. He also has trees that host caterpillars etc and of course shrubs etc that host aphids, The ground feeders get dug over earth and an area of shortish lawn. He has 3 ponds and nesting sites.

Works for him and the variety of birds are a sight to behold!

No pond here but either side of us are ponds - hence we get dragonflies around.

Our garden is a little untidy and some of my shrubs which are in large pots must have aphids or something because the blue tits are busy pecking at them.

A bit of neglect is a good thing! 🙂

Interesting thread. Down here in the Algarve we are getting far more birds than in the last few years. After a very wet spring there have been a lot more spring flowers now turning into seed heads, the very early fruit tree has been stripped already.

I don’t feed them the birds but I do have a bird bath which I’m washing out and refilling twice a day at the moment.

Nothing to do with the original thread but I did see an eagle yesterday. A split second landing and grab before it flew away again.

I love eagles. We get wedge tailed eagles flying over nearby but not in our garden. I once watched one grab a young rabbit and fly off with it,spectacular.

I love eagles too nanna8. We see two or three different varieties here over the year.

On a completely different note, I hope you are not affected by the current flooding in Australia.

We have peregrine falcons here but I don't think you would want them on your bird feeder.
We used to get acrobatic squirrels on ours.

AGAA4

We have peregrine falcons here but I don't think you would want them on your bird feeder.
We used to get acrobatic squirrels on ours.

The squirrels are entertaining but they are a nuisance.

We have peregrine falcons near here too.

@ dustyangel you lucky thing. I’m only too pleased that we have blue tits and other odds and ends. I think we have a crows nest in a silver birch but I haven’t seen any heads peering out yet.

Fat balls seem to bring all the birds in. We use them over the Winter and still have a few out but will stop them over the Summer. This morning we had a family of Starlings feeding, fighting with jackdaws, rooks, robins and blue tits. They all feed the fat balls to their young. The blackbirds, pigeons, doves and others circle below picking up all the bits.