tom&barbara writes

K wrote:
Alan Holmes writes

When should one stop feeding peanuts to small birds.

I understand it is not safe for them to try to feed their young with
peanuts.

They've been nesting for quite a while, so you shouldn't be feeding
whole peanuts now, or, if you are, you should make sure they're in a
wire feeder so birds can't get at whole ones, they can only peck out
bits.

I'm glad I read this post, this never occurred to me at all. I always
put out whole peanuts on the bird table. I will make sure in future
they can only get them from the wire feeder. Phew! Would hate to
think I was responsible for the death of any chicks.

Don't lose too much sleep over it - your feeding will have helped to
increase the numbers surviving over the winter, which will have
increased the number of breeding pairs this year. And if all the blue
tit eggs that were laid made it through to maturity, we'd be over-run by
the things ;-) Anything which produces more than two offspring during
its lifetime is expecting a proportion not to make it to maturity.
--
Kay