What bird feeders do you have?

[Nicos]

Our garden has been inundated with birds over the past few days- mainly because we have 6 bird feeders and a bird table for them to choose from.
They have a choice of peanuts or mixed seeds
Mostly we've had Bluetits and Chaffinche and a couple of blackbirds.

The feeders are a mixture of similar to these....

and


I've also thrown a few wrinkly apples on the lawn- and something has been pecking away!

What have other peeps been offering the birds???

[Bren In Pots]

I've got two same as the top one then a cage for fat balls we used to have a table but that only attracted big fat pigeons.

[HeatherL]

We have a bird feeding station with a niger seed feeder and a peanut feeder just outside the living room patio doors. We get goldfinches who incessantly squabble over the Niger seed and greater spotted woodpeckers (we call them woodys lol), blue and great tits, and occasionally nuthatches on the peanuts. There haven't been so many birds on it lately as it is in an exposed location and we have seen sparrow hawks trying to have dinner on a couple of occasions!

We also have another station by the raised beds, next to bushes and a large apple tree, this one is more frequented but only visible from the kitchen window. I put out sunflower hearts and fat balls which disappear in double quick time. We get blue tits, great tits, sometimes long tailed tits, chaffinches, dunnocks, a pair of robins, a pair of doves, sometimes bullfinches, greedy greenfinches, occasionally gangs of marauding starlings, oh and green woodpeckers foraging for ants in the lawn!

I was spending a fortune on bird food, then bought in bulk from an online supplier as it worked out cheaper.

[The Large One]

the bleedin birds round here eat better than i do....

1 large mixed seed feeder
1 4 fat ball feeder
1 8 fat ball feeder
1 large sunflower heart feeder
1 large niger seed feeder
1 peanut feeder
1 suet pellet feeder
1 meal worm feeder
all in the same twisted willow tree
takes me 1/2 hour a time to fill them all

majority of our birds are chaffinch, goldfinch, greenfinch, bluetit, greattit, sparrows and not many recently but last year loads of longtailtits

oh and a small wheat field growing underneath them from all the discarded seed
does the no mess stuff work ?? is it less mess than stabdard wild bird seed

[The Large One]

hopefully, when i get me finger out for chrimbo i got the missus one of the nestbox/seedfeeder camera wireless getups from the wildlifewhisperer website
when i get it sorted i'll try to upload some footage

[Two_Sheds]

handful of soaked sultanas for the blackbirds (not enough for the woodpigeons), and fat balls in the shrubs

Saucer of water too

[binley100]

I now have squirrel proof ones ......one for nuts and one for seeds . Also put out fat balls or bird cakes in a metal feeder and meal worms and a handful of seed in a tray for my robin. Tried hanging up half a suet filled coconut but somehow Jake decided it would be nice to eat ......

and water ....

[Aberdeenplotter]

I don't feed the birds unless we have a really hard cold snap and in any event, my neighbour has several bird feeders within 10 ft of my back door. He saw a mouse feeding on overspill the other day and because it ran under the fence into my garden tried to make out it was my fault there was vermin.

The realities of life were explained.

[Currysniffa]

We have a feeding station with two x4 fat ball feeders 1 peanut feeder and 1 meal worm feeder also put scraps out on a floor feeder for blackbird and robin, only really feed them through the winter I did feed them through the spring a summer a couple of years ago but all the overspill of seed ruined the lawn so I just winter feed really, I gave my niger feeders and seed feeders to a chap on the allotment and he has set up two feeding posts around the allotment.

[T8Ter]

We've got two similar feeders full of niger seed, two full of mixed seed, two mesh peanut feeders, two fatball cages and two square cages for the suet/fat "blocks".
Whilst most of the birds visiting are Sparrows (all types) Starlings, robins,collar doves, blackbirds, chaffinches and Blue, Great & Coal tits we also get a few surprises - regular visits to the niger feeders from 6 or 7 goldfinches, woodpeckers, greenfinches and on one occasion a Peregrine chasing the doves.

Nothing better than watching through the kitchen window the squabbling, even though there's plenty for all.

[jps]

i have tried a few different ones as we used to get birds but now there seem to be too many local cats and the birds havent been in ages.

it got so bad that the fat balls i was putting out were going moldy without being eaten so i stopped.

the only possible place i can think to put one is to somehow screw one to the top of the washing pole but then i wouldnt be able to see onto it when filling it up so havent bothered.

[Dynamo]

We get mainly sparrows and starlings in our garden. We used to get bluetits, and we even had some nesting in a birdbox one year, but when the young ones fledged, the magpies were straight after them. I don't know if any of the young escaped okay but we've never seen the bluetits since.

We have three seed feeders, a fat ball holder and a niger seed feeder on our frame, plus a tray for kitchen scraps that I usually put a fat ball or two into. I only placed the niger seed feeder on the frame last spring, but I didn't expect it to be eaten seeing as there's no blue tits anymore, but then we suddenly had a couple of Goldfinches visiting it. They went at it for about a month or so last spring, but then they disappeared never to be seen since, though in the past couple of days I've noticed the seed level in the feeder getting a bit lower again so maybe the goldfinches have started to return and we just haven't seen them yet.

We get a regular blackbird or two that visit the garden, and in recent weeks we've had a robin. One day we had two robins who decided to have a good bitch at each other. I throw suet pellets and mealworms on the ground for the robins and the blackbirds. I always put those out last thing at night because if I put them out during the day, the greedy starlings will come along and bag the lot in a matter of minutes. If the food is on the floor in the early hours, its usually far too early for the starlings to bother so the blackbirds and robins get it a bit easier. One funny thing we have noticed is that the blackbird will try to lead the starlings away from where the greater amount of ground food is.

I shop around for bird food but I've never looked online for it. The cheapest fat balls that I've found are a hundred for a tenner in one shop, plus the same shop sells a big bag of seed quite cheap as well. Mealworm is quite expensive and the cheapest I'd seen for a long time is the offer in Morrisons for 3 packs for a fiver. However, I've since found that Wilkinsons sell a tub of them for (I think) about 8 quid. That works out much cheaper than the Morrisons offer, plus I've found a local farm store that sells a nice sized bag of suet pellets for 8 quid as well. Its a shame I can't just get all the food from the same store. lol.

I'm going to have a gander online after I've written this to see if I can find the stuff any cheaper than what I already get. If anyone has any links for birdfood online, please post them. If I find any I will post them here.

[HeatherL]

I bought my last lot from here as they sell in large sizes. The box of fat balls and sunflower hearts has lasted ages

Wild Bird Products | GJW Titmuss Online Pet Store

Edit: just to say another reason I bought from here is that they sell the fat balls without nets, I hate having to cut open the nets and throw away all the plastic

[Dynamo]

I bought my last lot from here as they sell in large sizes. The box of fat balls and sunflower hearts has lasted ages

Wild Bird Products | GJW Titmuss Online Pet Store

Edit: just to say another reason I bought from here is that they sell the fat balls without nets, I hate having to cut open the nets and throw away all the plastic

Thats the cheapest I've seen mealworms on sale online if I bought a 5k bag. I don't know how it compared to the tub I bought at Wilkinsons though because that was measured in litres rather than kilo's. I'm going to have to weigh the ones I have to see whether I'm better off buying online on from the shop.

The price of fat balls is dearer there than from the shop I get them from though.

[binley100]

Would just like to say that the squirrel proof feeders are working .........much to the disgust of the squirrels