Any keen bird feeders out there?

londonTiger

Horseygirl123 wrote: »

The cost of feeding the birds has become a bit of a worry to me. I spend about £70-£80/month on fat balls/suet pellets/sunflower hearts and bird seed. These are bought in bulk off the internet. I have never seen so many different types of birds. A friend who is a keen bird watcher loves to come and see all the different birds on the feeders. I refill the feeders every morning and you can guarantee by lunchtime they're empty but I don't refill until the next morning.

I'm not sure whether to just half fill them daily or fill them every other day or just to stop altogether and hope they move on to wealthier neighbourhoods!

do you leave in a rural area? That's the only thing I can think of that will explain the wild bird population in your neck of the woods to justify that spend.

Do wild birds even need to be fed in rural areas. There are all sorts of natural foods around, looks of vegetation as well as insects about.

londonTiger

I jusat learnt today the squirrals eat meat too if they're desperate. Some video on youtube explained that they'll eat slugs during winter if they've run out of their vegan stash.

I researched this because I saw the squirral eating a bit of fatball that dropped throiugh the fatball feeder .

londonTiger

jenie wrote: »

Home Bargains is really cheap (pardon the pun):D for wild bird food, I always stock up there when I go into town, the birds here go crazy for sunflower hearts, suet nibbles and fat balls.

I got fatballs with their fatball feeder and the birds weren't interested in it at all. It was hard as a cricket ball. Perhaps it was really old food that's been kept in storage too long.

This stopped me from buying their fatballs.

I've tried 2 b&m stores and they did not have any sunflower hearts. I bought 3 bags from them before but I think b&m are discontinuting suflower hearts and only selling whole black sunflower seeds.

Whole sunflower seeds are deshelled by the birds and they can dump them at source (in your garden). But the advantage with them is the birds stick around longer to unshell them and you get to see the birds.

With sunflower hearts the birds are in and out in 5 seconds or less.

In case b&m stop selling sunflower hearts. Wilko do sell sunflower hearts though at 1kg for £2 (same rate as b&m, £1 per 500g).

Horseygirl123

londonTiger wrote: »

do you leave in a rural area? That's the only thing I can think of that will explain the wild bird population in your neck of the woods to justify that spend.

Do wild birds even need to be fed in rural areas. There are all sorts of natural foods around, looks of vegetation as well as insects about.

Yes it's very rural. My neighbour mentioned last year that it was so nice to see there were more birds about than usual and she wondered why. I was hoping once she found out that she would be encouraged to spend a bit on bird food herself - but no:(

I am surrounded by farmland. Just the other day I watched the fields being harvested. The same day the stubble was ploughed in and redrilled. These fields would have been left as stubble for weeks at one time providing lots of food for the birds but now there is such a rush to get the next crops in.

Since I've been there I've planted lots of native hedgerows and trees and let the existing hedgerows thicken up so hopefully that'll be a bit of extra grub.

londonTiger

baby pigenous just raided my fatball feeder (the seed feeders are protected with squirral guard.

A bit annoyed by this, they're squabbling for the tiny landing area and making a lot of noise. I want to only supply food to the smaller birds who can get muscled out by big birds on wild food sources.

I've ordered a fatball feeder with squirral guard now.

cally6008

londonTiger - My local store still sells the Sunflower hearts, i know some stores don't stock all products and they just put out what comes in from the warehouse

Horseygirl123 - Normally the fields would be left as stubble for a while but there's a rush on to try and get the straw and hay off the fields before it turns bad. Unfortunately with this weather, it means getting it in and the ground sorted out whilst there's a brief gap in the weather.

I think I've cracked the problem of the birds here not eating peanuts.
Yesterday I took half a cup full, took the outer shell off and split them in half.
It seems to have worked ... just need to empty the feeder and do the rest of them now, Lol.

Primrose

I think a lot of peanuts are kept in store for too long so go hard as rocks and the birds just can,t eat them. We put then in a mini food processor to grind them up and mix then with other bird seed in the tube feeders.

londonTiger

Primrose wrote: »

I think a lot of peanuts are kept in store for too long so go hard as rocks and the birds just can,t eat them. We put then in a mini food processor to grind them up and mix then with other bird seed in the tube feeders.

does it remain solid or become peanut butter like?

Primrose

No the peanuts go into crumbs and easily mix with other bird seeds

Braithwaite1000

A lot of the cheaper peanuts are simply poor quality, you can see if they are going to be any good quite easily. Any that look small and shrivelled/ dried out are not any good as they're too hard for the birds to eat.
The best peanuts are larger and soft, you should be able to crush a nut between your forefinger and thumb easily, if you can't then the birds will struggle to eat them.

Who is it that is now charging you extra on your delivery Gers? It seems that a lot of online companies charge extra for "Scottish Highland " deliveries. Brinvale Bird Foods claim to have free delivery to all of the UK, they might be worth looking at?