"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...

"ex WGS Hamm" wrote in message
news

wrote in message
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Message from James on Sun, 17 Oct 2004 00:15:36

Slightly OT-Feeding Birds:


"Joanne" wrote in message
...
Here's a stupid question -- when they say you can feed bacon
rind to
birds,
do you have to cook the bacon, or if it's raw do you have to
chop it
into
little bits, or what?

Thanks.

Not a stupid question IMHO Joanne

People think they are being kind in this sort of way, but 9 times
out of
ten
they are killing off our feathered friends.
My advice is to use google to find the RSPB site and ask there.
and then let us all know what you found.
another trick is to use logic, but I think sometimes we have a
fuzzy
logic
installed in our brains as well.

I would have thought that most wildlife instinctively know what's
good
and safe to eat.
--

You are wrong I'm afraid. Animals and birds will scoff ultra fatty
stuff or
salty stuff. Salt kills a bird very quickly. I keep parrots so am a
bit
careful as to what I feed.(40+ expensive parrots). My sister once
fed her
beloved hens some avocado thinking she was giving them an expensive
treat.
She got up next day, opened the henhouse to find all her hens dead.
Yes,
avocado is poisonous to most birds and animals. I once had a rescue
dog raid
the bin and eat avocado peelings and chewed the stone. I didn't
realise what
he had done until I found him comatose the next morning. Prompt and
expensive action from a vet saved him and it was only because I
found the
chewed stone and remains of peel that I knew what he had done.
Animals have no sixth sense as to what might kill them, especially
in deep
winter when they are starving and need vast amounts of food to
survive.
The best things to put on a bird table are, sunflower seeds(cheap
to buy
and a source of fat to make calories to keep warm) suet
,ditto,unsalted
nuts, fruit and things like cooked vegetable scraps as long as they
are not
cooked with salt.
I admit to being a softy. I have 3 bird tables and buy a sack of
sunflower
seed, a smaller bag of peanuts, and a sack of budgie seed at the
start of
winer. I mix them together with some of the mixed corn I feed my
chickens
on. The 2 sacks will cost around £20 and the peanuts around a fiver.
This
little lot will feed the wild birds all winter plus some safe
scraps. I also
buy fat balls which you can get very cheaply from £1 shops and QD
and
wilkinsons.
On my weekly trips to the abbatoir for bones for my 7 dogs, I also
get a
carrier bag of fat which I hang on tree branches. That attracts
dozens of
starlings and blue tits.
To be honest a sack of wild bird mix will only cost around £9 and
if you
only have one bird table, that plus a few dozen fat balls will feed
hundreds
of birds and help them survive until next spring. They will reward
you with
beautiful songs and hours of entertainment through your winter on a
cold
winters day :0)

You have either very few or very hungry birds. We get through 3 sacks
of peanuts and 3 of sunflower seed per year for our garden birds, plus
around 15 lbs weight of fat puddings.

You seem only to have noticed the sacks of food and ignored the fat from
the abbatoir, scraps, chhicken food and other things like fruit I listed.
I suppose it depends entirely on the area one lives. I am right out in the
fens. Not many trees here. I have lots of wild birds to feed but they also
forage elsewhere. I expect a suburban garden with lots of trees and bushes
might have larger numbers of birds.