Feeding the birds??

jalima choughs have red legs, it’s a dead give away. The Cornish ones usually have red beaks too. Alpine choughs have yellow beaks. If it’s one of those I would keep it quiet or you might have a garden full of hairy twitchers with long lenses!

I did wonder, no definitely not red legs!
Thanks.

We put out bird seed bought from our local garden centre, also peanuts in a feeder. We get blackbirds, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, robins, wrens, house sparrows, dunnock, collared doves, jackdaws and crows. We also have a cock pheasant who visits regularly. The heron flies along the river at the bottom of the hill. Just once this winter I've seen a bullfinch. I love watching the birds from my living room window.

Oh good bargain Purpledaffodilwill get some?

Parakeets have been seen in Norwich! Are they a problem? Should DH add them to his black list?

As well as the usual garden birds we have lots of red kites which were reintroduced to the area about 15/20 years ago and have definitely grown in number. They have an enormous wing span and I lie in bed seeing them fly passed the window ? Our youngest GC 5 thinks they are Eagles !

We too have parakeets which are supposed to eat the food the garden birds like. They fly over us each day making a squawking sound, but don't come into our patio garden.

Our garden isn't large, but the rooks have become brave enough to strip the bird table of scraps only a few feet from the window and come daily to check us out. I didn't mind the original one who used to come last winter, but now he's bringing his entire family. Luckily they don't eat seed. But parakeets do and I've heard they can be a problem.

Rooks don't seem to congregate in out garden but I have learned to dislike jackdaws because their family groups make a tremendous noise from dawn. The young birds demand to be fed by adult birds from spring onwards. They also try to mob our bird feeders. We use feeders that are protected by cages and this keeps larger birds out but the jackdaws keep trying. I know all creatures have a right to life but not at the expense of my sleep! Jackdaws are definitely on my black list.

NfKDumpling, opinions on parakeets differ. I think they are beautiful and lend a tropical air as they fly over with the sun shining through their feathers. They don’t seem to bully other birds and eat a reasonable share of peanuts, fat balls and seeds. However farmers have complained that they are destructive to crops and should be culled.?
Now wood pigeons are another matter. They gobble up everything and transform it into huge messes on my car as they roost above it. Very ungrateful I think. ?

Goldfinches crowd round the sunflower hearts containers, they are messy feeders, you can see then discard so much and the pigeons wait underneath for this. Then this year I got an 'Einstein' pigeon, who discovered that if it flew and fluttered against this sunflower feeder it could make enough fall to the ground. My feeder is on the edge of my lawn and there is a bald patch underneath it due to these pigeons.

I would like to know how to avoid the mess! Other than no grow seed and no suet the floor underneath is slippery and extremely messy. I have pressure washed the patio - but am really at a loss.

I've tried all sorts of seed varieties, but the birds here ignore them all and want sunflower hearts. I've spent a fortune buying special seed mixes but have given up - the cat particularly liked the robin mix with meal worms, she was up on the bird table munching away!

~We put out soaked mealworms for the robin(s) only to find that the magpies have come and demolished the lot

We've got our bird table on the grass and the seed/fat ball containers hanging off the fence (lawn underneath) so any fallen seeds that are not eaten by ground feeders just grow as interesting grass varieties and get mown when the lawn is cut.
Our lawn is more 'meadow' than bowling green whitewave

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The bloomin' birds round here are just too fussy or well-fed. I put out fat granules, fat balls and seed mix - all in feeders. The only one they will touch is the fat granules. I usually end up emptying the seed one on the lawn, then the overstuffed pigeons eat it, but no others. I've also got next boxes - never seen them in use. What am I doing wrong? Any thoughts? No-one else around here feeds birds, so they must be getting their food from somewhere. Little blighters.

Whitewave and Jalima - our 'lawn' is interesting too. If we ever used one of those selective lawn feed/weed killer things, we'd have bare earth! It's green though, that's about the only connection it has with a proper lawn.

DittoOurKid1 love my garden but given up on the lawn it belongs to all the grandkids who leapfrog,tumble,play football,tennis etc ooh and the MOLE does his share of damage too, was getting really stressed re the lawn but not any more... acceptance ?

Many birds will eat from fatballs but it’s mainly the small birds bluetits, goldfinches, greenfinches etc that love seeds.
We have a jackdaw gang that descend on the fatballs and peanuts, I swear they wait until they see our car leave the drive then they gleefully descend.

We get a wide range of birds too which I really enjoy watching. The ubiquitous starlings spend their time squabbling whilst the smaller birds nip in and take the goodies!
We've just started getting a jackdaw too and there'sa spotted woodpecker and a jay from time to time. The only trouble is that I'm a bit lax in keeping the feeders full - thanks to the squirrels [grey] but it's also fun to watch their acrobatics.