Feeding Birds

[Shortie]

Can you add garden seeds too to the fat mix? I've got chive seeds that I'm going to bin very soon before they seed themselves all round the garden and wondered if it was worth keeping them?

[Madasafish]

I add any seeds we have at the time and raisins and apple and ....whatever is edible..

We end up with occasional flocks of starlings or jackdaws or tits or whatever... and as I said they disappear very quickly...

[smallblueplanet]

...
During th Spring, when the birds are feeding chicks, we chuck out such stuff as leftover mashed potato, rice (preferably with curry sauce on), stuffing, bread sauce. You know you've got a nest of blackbirds nearby whey you see a frantic adult flying out of the garden with as much mash as his/her beak will hold...

No disrespect valmarg, but I wonder if you might get furry visitors as well as feathered ones feeding left-overs? (Its no fun if you do get rats around your birfeeders as I know from experience )

[Two_Sheds]

Can you add garden seeds too to the fat mix? I've got chive seeds...

Birds eat oil-rich seeds like sunflower, millet, hemp, that kind of thing. I wouldn't have thought birds would eat Chives, but I prepare to be corrected ...!

[Madasafish]

We have badgers which come round each night and scavenge for peanuts. ANd squirrels during the day. The field mice don't get a look-in!:-)

[valmarg]

No disrespect valmarg, but I wonder if you might get furry visitors as well as feathered ones feeding left-overs? (Its no fun if you do get rats around your birfeeders as I know from experience )

For the very first time in 30+ years we were 'bothered' with rats this year. Apparently the heavy rains in May and June drove them out of the sewers, according to the local council. They provided poison to see off the problem, and we are not troubled at the moment.

Any leftovers I throw out, I throw out early morning, and if there's anything left by lunchtime/early afternoon it gets swept up and binned. Its mainly thrown out in Spring when they are desperate to feed the chicks. From the beakful of mashed potato, etc flying out of the garden, the next phase is bringing the juveniles into the garden to teach them 'what their beak is for'. For a while they feed the chicks from the leftovers, but not for long. After a while the chick has to feed itself.

At this time of year, apart from sparrows, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, wren and chaffinches there's not a lot of birds in the garden. There has been the odd goldfinch and nuthatch recently, but come the winter we shall have loads of them.

valmarg

[Two_Sheds]

Our starlings go mad for Malt Loaf - hung up high so the rats can't dine. I never put food on the ground, though my neighbours do ...
... and they are always complaining that the allotments encourage the rats!