garden birds

I have a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. I get many birds large and small. I bought a little RSPB book so that I could identify the different species. It makes cooking and working n the kitchen much more pleasant watching them.

I have a grand variety of birds visit the feeders in my garden. Blue, great and coal tits. Siskins, green, gold finches. Robins, sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds, starlings, crows, magpies, pigeons, collar dovest, these being mainly ground feeders clearing up any spillage. Woodpeckers also visit and I am thrilled that the adults are visiting with their young this year. I use peanuts, nyger seeds and the favourite of all visitors, sunflower seeds. Can't keep them filled!

I spend hours watching the birds on my feeders. I bought a bird book and now I know that sparrows of different types, goldfinch, cole tits and blue tits use them and blackbirds, thrush and pigeons hoover up the dropped seeds. No cats. Perfection.

I loved watching the birds at the feeding station , alas i also had to stop feeding them due to rats , saw one actually climbing up the pole , even without that we have lots of birds in the garden now

We live opposite woodland so we get a huge variety of birds. I have only high feeders as we have cats. They love Flutterbye blocks. U fortunately the foxes can jump high so they do get some. We also see a sparrowhawk that kills the small birds & a heron that would eat all our fish if pond wasn"t netted.
Try the stick on window feeders. We get loads of small birds on them & it drives the cats potty. They sit on windowledge inoors huddering at the birds, and I'm sure the birds are laughing.

May I suggest a niger seed bird feeder(best one I have come across is Wilko’s £2) ?
We have one and the goldfinches love it because the bigger birds -parakeets and pigeons mainly can’t get at the seeds through the tiny holes in the feeder.
The goldfinches still pinch their sunflower hearts though as well.

The cats stalk the birds when they are on the ground not when they are on the feeder.

I did the RSPB bird survey earlier in the year. They send a super identification chart and I had to tick off the numbers of each species for an hour.
One year I must have chosen the wrong hour because there were a only two sparrows !

Yesterday afternoon was quite challenging as the blackbirds were making loud warning calls all the time. I think a magpie was in the trees but couldn't really see. It all started again at 6 this morning and they were so noisy. Atm it's all quiet. I hope if there's babies they are ok.

Fennel, I'm wondering if your birds may be Greenfinches? Suggest you look at the RSPB website. We never saw any Greenfinches but since the feeder has been put up we see them daily. Pied Wagtails don't use feeders to my knowledge. (Must go and refill). Costing us a fortune but more than happy. We are slowly turning our somewhat sterile garden into a garden for wildlife.

I have a real problem with pigeons they fly a little birds and even the squirrels are scared of them blasted things.i too have a tiny bird very quick mover with a bright yellow chest.we also get robins and last year we had a family of robins they are beautiful.

I saw a YouTube video in which Bill Oddie had a wire hanging basket ,on its side, hooked over his window feeder to prevent problem of large birds feeder sitting. I've now got old wire hanging baskets , upside down , covering my fat ball feeders. This has not completely stopped the Jackdaw but now at least the feeders have some fatball in all day and the small birds get some. The Jackdaws used to empty them by 9am.

That b.....wood pigeon has knocked the whole thing down again .
Husband has fixed a new system where the feeder is fixed on with wire to a sort of swinging arm.
I'm beginning to think that the small birds are skinny sparrows.
Thanks for all the other ideas - we're just learners, so much to learn.

I love watching the many birds that visit my garden. Such a shame it is being reported that thousands are being killed by wind turbines as well as bats - turbines cause pressure waves which make bats’ lungs implode.

Pantglas1
Oh yes! Birdsong is the song of my heart! It has been a joy this summer. I notice already it is beginning to fade a bit. The fervour of late Spring has gone.

I try to grow plants with berries too, for the birds in Autumn and if poss. the Winter.

Reminds me... my early raspberries are ready.....

I bought Mr P a little camera which he placed behind the bird feeder in the garden. He can now watch the birds feeding close up on his tablet and it is really entertaining. We feed them all year round with sunflower hearts and have quite a variety of species. The only nuisance is a squirrel but after much trial and error I think we have found ? proof feeders.

Aepgirl

We’ve always had bird tables and feeders everywhere we’ve lived I love watching the birds, but a couple of years ago, I saw a rat in the garden, and stopped feeding them.

I would love to get a new bird table, but my fear of rats is bigger than my love of birds

I absolutely love birds and as we are on the railway line we have an abundance of garden birds. I think the wren is my favourite - such a brave teeny little bird, singing his heart out on the tree outside my kitchen window most mornings. I also like the chatter of the long tailed tits, who take the spiders from my very old rotten sash windows! Haven't seen many bullfinches this year, but have my house on the market and had to weed all the herb robert that they seem to love

We have a robin who demands food when the ground cage is empty. He sits on the door handle of the kitchen door. We can on occasions feed from the hand. I’ve heard of blackbirds begging for mealworms but haven’t witnessed this behaviour myself.

Of course, could be a she

We don’t get many different birds here, despite being on the edge of farm and woodland. I have a large flock of jolly sparrows, some blackbirds and a couple of robins. Goldfinches visit, but don’t come down into the garden unless they are desperate for the bird bath. They love niger seed so I bought some and a special feeder but it remained unused so I took it down. We won’t feed the birds again now until winter. Talking of sparrowhawks, I was once off sick getting over a slipped disc, and was ensconced in a chair in the conservatory feeling sorry for myself when a sparrowhaw flew down into the fir tree which grew very close to the terrace. He sat there, preening, and I could see him in every detail. He stayed for quite a while and then flew off and I never saw him again. I think he came to cheer me up! We would get any number of lovely birds in our last garden. I miss them.

We get different birds back and front. With a small river and fields to the back we get flocks of field sparrows, a few blue tits, a robin or two, starlings and the occasional woodpecker. The feeder at the front attracts a wider range so house sparrows, all kinds of tits, pied wagtails, robins, doves and pigeons, also blackbirds to hoover up from the ground. I’m sure some must fly over the roof and mix but we rarely see it. We don’t put food in the summer, just water. Thinking birds and cats there was one incident where a cat caught a rather large pigeon. I spoke to a local animal rescue centre, had a very kind response and was reassured that by feeding the birds we were keeping far more alive and so should carry on. A pragmatic and sensible approach we thought.

We are lucky to have few cats in our area and our joy is to watch the birds as we breakfast. There was a green woodpecker on our lawn for about ten minutes yesterday. It was most exciting - though we don’t know what he was after in the grass. He was joined in the trees around by wood pigeons, blackbirds, starlings, finches of various types and a red kite wheeling above them all.

Lilyflower, green woodpeckers eat ants from the grass. I love their laughing call. Remember Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss?

There's an app with all British birds on together with their sounds. Think I got it from Amazon, free, v. Good. Had it a while now.