Feeding the Birds

floyd

Finally after a few days of waiting, OH has spotted quite a few Fieldfares and Redwings that have decided its safe to come into the garden and are making short work of the 3 apples I hung in the tree.
Hopefully they wont scare off my usual littlies as the bird table is far enough away from the tree for them both to eat separately. Not sure the goldfinches will stand for it though, they are feisty little swines

Counting_Pennies_2

I have been putting out the discarded apple cores from my children and they have gone down well.

What about cooking apples. Obviously inedible for humans uncooked, but would birds be ok with them?

Penelope_Penguin

Lots of good ideas here :T I'll add it to the existing thread to keep ideas together

Penny. x

Primrose

At this time of year in the bitter cold birds are desperate for food. We buy packets of own brand jumbo oats and stir them into warm melted leftover cooking fat or dissolved lard, and then store them in a large container. Virtually every variety of bird will seem to eat this. We also chop up old wrinkled apples from our fruit bowl, put peanuts in hanging cages, and put mixed bird seed, stale grated cheese and a few sultanas on the bird table which is on the lawn, so that if seed gets scattered and grows, anything which grows eventually gets mown back with the lawn mower.

In the current snowy weather, we've cleared a patch of snow to put down for the birds and they're queueing up at first light for the food we put down several times a day.

Primrose

Lip-stick - just read your post about your fox. We have one which visits us every night. She's a lame vixen (we think) and we put food out for her - cooked or raw meat fat scraps, cheap chicken wings if we can find them, some tinned meat cat food (not fish varieties). Our local butcher also sometimes has raw chicken carcasses. We make chicken stock with them, and any scrappy chicken meat scraps which come off the bones are also put out for her. Foxes will often also eat bread and honey if really hungry but brown bread is better than white bread.

fedupfreda

floyd wrote: »

Not sure the goldfinches will stand for it though, they are feisty little swines

Lol.:D But I have a pied wagtail in my garden that sees off all comers - even the starlings :eek: Every morning he or she is patrolling their patch under the feeders. Scares off everything that comes anywhere near - chaffinches, blackbirds, the aforementioned starlings, greenfinches, goldfinches, robins, even the local feral pigeons - and they are massive by comparison. That's one brave bird. Courage like that deserves to go rewarded.

nuttyrockeress

I made loads of reindeer food before Christmas and what stuff didn't sell is now being put out for the birds.

We also use crushed cheap digestives, seedy crackers as well as the reindeer food.

We have a regular female blackbird visitor and a robin come to visit - we have put a tuppareware lid on our old B and D workmate for them as we don't have a birdtable

soon2bjobless

Hi - saw this on the Martha Stewart website - good way of using up pumpkins.....

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/pumpkin-bird-feeder?backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/kids-fall-crafts#slide_4

cheers

Linda

BlimusOreilly

That's great, thanks for sharing. I think I may use our carved out pumpkin for that. As long as it's not too heavy.

jaxx46

I've done that with our smallest one & there was a mass punch up between the starlings earlier all trying to get a bit.