Any keen bird feeders out there?

Gers

Just spent a wee while watching three blackbirds squabbling over apple pieces - three males!

The goldfinches are 'glued' to the nyger seed feeder, they just sit there and eat until the feeder is empty.

REEN

Spotted a magpie with a twig in its beak yesterday. Anyone else seen nest building starting?

Primrose

Reen wrote: »

Spotted a magpie with a twig in its beak yesterday. Anyone else seen nest building starting?

Yes, have seen a number of wood pigeons in a tree adjacent to our garden using their beaks to bend and snap off twigs. It's some kind of early flowering blossom tree with particularly springy, snappy twigs and they make a bee line foe it every year at nesting time. I suppose these kinds of twigs are easier to weave into a nest structure.

They're quite focussed. They're there at it early every morning!

We also have blue tits investigating a nesting box on our fence. It was much sought after in previous years when it was mostly shielded by a tall pyracantha bush but that has had to be removed and the box is now no longer camouflaged so I suspect the tits may now give it a wide berth for nesting now its no longer tucked away out of sight.

cally6008

WOW ... B&Ms are now selling 12.5kg peanuts (not with skins on) for £14-99

Gers

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

If it's any consolation, the hazelnuts are slightly better for him that the walnuts!

If only you had the time to live stream your wildlife setting, it would fabulous to watch. But instead, enjoy it for us!

I do have a live stream, and second one on the bird feeder but they're in our back garden so only for family and friends. There is recordable CCTV being installed on Monday as I want to see what happens all the time (can't sit watching the stream all day!) so if there's any interesting footage I'll post it up.

Hazelnuts are good for the squirrels and s/he/ they have access to sunflower seeds, apple, broccoli and carrot. One I cracked open the walnut it was buried!

The peanuts are being sucked up by the tits,some siskins come in for sunflower seeds, got one red linnet and loads of spuggies now too.

bettyboo71

We moved from Edinburgh to Skye a few months back, and I have a garden for the first time in 25 years. We inherited an old bird feeder and I was keen to fill it and see what happened. We now have three feeders and a very busy garden. The blackbirds make me angry because they bully the smaller birds. Apart from them, the robin is clearly in charge, then my guess is the 'pecking order' is chaffinches, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, sparrows. We have a pair of collared doves who visit occasionally.
I saw a buzzard in the garden once (we regularly see them around here) but the main problem is the sparrowhawk. We see a male and female regularly and have once previously seen it get a sparrow from the garden. Last week it got one of the pigeons. Unfortunately, the pigeon was too big for it to carry away, so it just sat under the bush in our garden for two hours :-( When we thought it had gone away, we went out to do our best to clean up, but she was still there, obviously taking a rest and hiding at the back of the bush. We obviously startled her and she took off, and we did our best to clean up the garden. We figured the wind would get rid of the rest of the feathers, but had to go back out yesterday and use the rake to get rid of them, because the little birds were not having their usual fun under the bush.
We have previously discussed the problem of predators, but I am reluctant to interfere with nature, distressing though these incidents can be. It seems unlikely that we can find anything that would deter the sparrowhawks that wouldn't also deter the other birds. Although I would be grateful if anyone does have any advice or suggestions.
On a happier note, we think our robin may have found a mate, as there has been a second one appearing in the garden over the last few days, and it hasn't been chased off like the previous 'visiting' robins we have seen. Fingers crossed.

ljonski

think of it this way, the sparrow hawk has its own bird table of its own!

Ken68

Frantic knocking on the door just now, neighbour pointed out a RED KITE flying in circles being mobbed by seagulls.
Brilliant colour, huge wingspan.

Primrose

We have see this happen quite a lot where we live because we have lots of red kits but generally they are being mobbed by crows or rooks. They are quite big birds when you see them really close up , especially the females which I believe are larger then the males. We throw out meat or fat scraps for them onto the lawn and it's spectacular seeing them swoop down, grab them and fly off in a couple of seconds. They're generally far too swift to be able to photograph.

Fay

Oh this post has slipped right down. We have had a new bird in the garden which I think was a linnet. But it hasn't been back since boo. A starling also visited yesterday.
The finches haven't come back, nor the nuthatches. But the tits are still very regular as are the robins. The hedgehogs are also up and about...not birds I know lol