GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Bird houses, feeders and food

JakeD[_2_] · 12-10-2007, 07:04 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:28:42 +0100, Sacha
wrote:

On 11/10/07 22:22, in article ,
"JakeD" wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:24:13 +0100, Char Kenny
wrote:

Can the birds really tell a difference?

I have now tried several kinds of bird-feed, including fat balls,
peanits and various seeds, all hung in net bags outside my bedroom
window, so I can see what's eating what.

The only birds that ever come for a snack are great tits! (Black head,
yellow breast.) They only eat the peanuts and some large seeds that
look something like pumpkin seeds.

I wish I knew what would appeal to some of the other birds in the
garden.

JD

Just get a good mixture, as in varied. I add sunflower hearts to ours and
sometimes niger seed in a separate feeder. The latter goes almost overnight
but we suspect squirrels there! I'm going to experiment with it outside a
window on the second storey of the house where squirrels can't get to it.
In the garden and all the greenhouses we put fat balls, mixed seed and
peanuts, crumbs and some niger seed. Bird numbers are down, most
definitely but we get blackbirds, some thrushes, chaffinches, blue tits and
on the second storey seed feeder, I see coal tits and green finches, too.
During the fledging season this year, we put meal worms here and there and
they were like a 4* restaurant to 'our' birds.
It takes some time for birds to find the food source and to trust it as not
hiding some lurking predator. While we were away for two weeks, the second
storey seed feeder outside my study emptied. After we got back I re-filled
it but it took the birds a good 3 days to come back to it, even though they
were used to it and had used it frequently before we went away. It is now
nearly empty and will need re-filling tomorrow! The Tawny Owls are flying
again and I heard them at 6am today in the garden. Just a few nights ago we
went to our local for supper and could hear a parent in a nearby tree
calling the young. I think that's all part of the training them to feed and
to maintain a territory. Whatever it is, it's wonderful! Having lost two
trees in the neighbouring churchyard in which they both roosted and nested,
the rooks are now noisily sorting out new territory for themselves in our
garden. The main hub of their activity has always been the Atlantic cedar
at the end of our main lawn but we think they're now going to colonise a
copper beech even more heavily - thus inevitably hastening its demise - and
are taking over another conifer that they have, so far, ignored.

Thank you for the response and advice. Yes, tawny owls are wonderful
to hear, aren't they? Each one seems to have a different call. Last
Summer I went off hiking and camping on my own in the wilds. Soon
after I was bedded down, the silence was broken by a tawny owl up in a
tree, directly overhead. Gorgeous sound. So much more musical than the
call of the crow which you also mentioned... They sound almost
ominous to me. Where I live, they seem to throng in the big trees
surrounding a big spooky old dilapidated country house near here, the
spooky inhabitant of which no-one ever quite sees...

JD