On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 08:54:04 +0100, Kay Easton wrote:

Do you have the right small birds? They're not all insect eaters.
Bluetits seem to be the best for eating aphids, as others have said, and
I often see them eating aphids on the honeysuckle outside the kitchen
window.

When it comes to birds, the UK differs so greatly from the PacNW
that discussion is moot: entirely different species. But it is
true that encouraging certain species can benefit the garden.

We have a little bird here, the bushtit. (You may have it in the
UK, too, but heaven's only knows if the name is used in the same
way.) I enjoy putting out lumps of suet for them in the winter.
Hang a nice lump of suet from a string so the rats and raccoons
and such can't get at it, and watch the bushtits go to town. I've
seen over a dozen on a single lump.

(They're charming little birds that seem to travel in flocks of
thirty or forty and come swinging through every fifteen minutes
or so as they make their rounds.

I put up three or four such feeding stations every year -- suet
is very cheap at the local grocery store.

Mirabile dictu, it turns out that the bushtits, encouraged by the
suet, also work hard at cleaning up the garden. I had the great
pleasure of watching one closeup through a window while it was
working over a Cytisus battandieri. It took a while to figure out
just what my little feathered friend was doing, but eventually I
could see that he (she?) was methodically searching for, and
eating, coccoons of small caterpillars. My C. battandieri is
alway chewed up by some small caterpillar, and they evidently
pupate in situ.

Next winter, suet in the cytisus.


--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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