Message from david taylor on Wed, 7 Jun 2006
08:34:07 Some bird education please:

It's not all doom and gloom. Our hanging nut baskets balls were visited by
more than a dozen species of birds over the winter. Only tits were
sufficiently confient to manage fat balls.
Tits and greenfinches and gold crest have the natural ability to hang on so
do starlings and woodpeckers (and not observed tree creepers and
nuthatches). Several other birds, chaffinch, robin and house sparrow
developed the ability over the winter.
Collared doves approached the nut baskets along an adjacent branch and
became confused when the end of the branch dipped away under their weight.
Dunnocks and wrens scounged the bits that fell off.
Birds are individuals and the learning of oyster catchers for example is
well documented-it takes then a year to learn to open a mussel- and 18months
before they have the skill to bring up a brood.
I left the nut basket up into the nesting season and it was ignored for a
week as the weather picked up.
During a cold snap they came back and cleaned it out, so I put out the last
cupful of nuts, and our nesting bluetits used it briefly. There is plenty of
food now so after a couple of days they ignored it.
Clean up and wait for next winter!
It is possible the robin in question had difficulty eating from fat balls in
a mesh and would only try when it was extremely hungry. As for other birds,
what is your local natural population? How many cats use your garden?
Feeding is a high risk situation for birds-even the agile tits are
constantly loking around when hanging on a nut basket. Sometimes they feed
in pairs-one on look out.
regards
David T


I feed the birds throughout the summer. There are always a few visitors
for sunflower, and tits, blackbird, doves, robin and starlings
appreciate lightly dampened bread. Fat balls and fat cakes are
dominated by starlings. Goldfinches take sunflower hearts and nyger.
Tit and starlings also go for peanuts.

Joe
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