Feeding the Birds

ben500

hazzie123 wrote:

Well I must say you lot have changed my mind about feeding the birds even those horried sh*tehawks.So any leftover fruit,nuts,meat fat will be going out for them.

I have some peanuts still in the shell in a glass bowl in the front room as a nice looking thingy.The nuts will be about 2 years old by now,would it be safe to use them for the birds? I broke one up and the nuts look ok not shriveled up.

Good for you, once you start feeding the [strike]shItehawks[/strike] pigeons you will more than likely be shocked at how tame they become, you will even start to recognise them:rotfl: as there are vast differences if only you look, and in tiime even develop your favourites.

The nuts will be fine, put them out, the goods one's will get eaten any rotten ones will degrade and dissappear anyway. Generally the size of the food offered depends on the type of bird to visit your garden, crows like large pieces especially if they can stuff two or three in their beaks per visit, and also nuts, pigeons tend only to go for nuts if they are chopped but will eat bread, corn, seed and fat etc, seed will attract varying sizes and species of bird, bacon fat is excellent or scrounge fat from your local butcher, I put any table scraps out for the birds and every single bit gets eaten apart from cooked veg so throw them in the bin, as they are not even any good for the compost bin, never put raw oats out this will kill the bird by swelling in the gut once eaten, almost any other cereal that has not been used up can go out though. I get a 25k bag of seed for a tenner at the moment which lasts me around three to four weeks but then again the pigeons in my street are aristocrats as are all the other birds.

Strepsy

Al_Mac wrote:

I had to bin the nut holder yesterday, the squirrels had destroyed it. Can you get squirrel proof ones

Apparently one of the best things to do is to give the squirrels their own feeder away from where you feed the birds.

davey_browning

Anyone know where you can get a nice bird table for not a lot of dollar?

Cheers

D

tawnyowls

I bought a nice Gardner feeding station for £15 in a sale in the local garden centre - long pole, with 2 hooks for nut/seed feeders, a circular holder for the supplied water dish, and a little metal tray for bread, fat balls etc.

Well, we've had the odd few finches, but that's it! My forgotten-about bread that I rescued from the BM a couple of days ago hasn't been touched. Ungrateful beggars.

full-time-mum

I've been clearing out and found odds and ends of packets of dried fruit and nuts etc. I thought that rather than ditch it, I would make a fat cake for the birds. I've already got half a coconut to put it in and a recipe.

Does anyone know whether it is ok to use veggie suet instead of the really stuff as I have half an out-of-date packet of that too.

Thanks

Rikki

The veggie suet will be fine.

needmoney

Luck old birds FTM, my lot are just getting seed at the moment, haven't been out there today too rough, garden furniture has taken a trip across the yard and the bird house is doing little dances, been over once and a chunk is now missing.

Rikki

Another thought.
If you make a hole in an empty yoghurt pot, tie a knot in apiece of string on the inside of the pot. Fill it with the bird cake mix when its cooled a little, chill in fridge. Cut off the pot and you have a hanging bird cake.

iwanttosave_2

I think our local birds have black listed me

I put out 3 lots of nuts and stuff last week and stull no birdies

Alfietinker

My feeder is untouched too. I think the cats in the window have scared them!