Bird feeders

 When we bought this house, with small garden, about four years ago my present to myself was a bird-feeder - one of those ones with arms for hanging things from. Here are some thoughts.

We had very few birds visiting between June and November this year. This month, however, I have started feeding again. This includes a daily scattering of a few "suet sprinkles!" and a few mealworms, so that the ground feeders get a share. Immediately today two magpies swooped down and ate the lot. Even the wood pigeons were too slow off the mark. The ground-feeders I like to see are dunnock, robin and blackbird; and they do appear with reasonable frequency. But this episode does reinforce the general point that the wildlife gardener had better not discriminate between types of wildlife. Sweet, colourful, attractive or uncommon creatures - well, they are attractive. But it is not, I suggest, for us to discriminate. 

The feeders, just before a major cleaning and refilling session.

The regular birds just now (in small numbers) include nothing uncommon or "special". But I get great pleasure seeing coal tits and sparrows. In fact it is not long since the disappearance of sparrows from our gardens was a worry. We seem to have a good number nearby who visit us regularly. I think the number of privet hedges around - in our case not privet, but some thick bushes - and their fairly omnivirous habit has got them going again. Good.

You are not, in a small garden, going to get birds arriving that are not in the locality. I was recently very jealous at a friend's house. She backs onto some old woodland and her garden birdlife was much more exciting than mine. We have had long-tailed tits fairly often, as the flocks roam around. A sparrow hawk has occasionally sat on the fence, thinking. A heron was seen on the garage roof when the pond was full of frogs but I think it decided against coming to ground level.

The big disappointment just now is that we have not seen a goldfinch for a while. Sometimes they have been regulars, and sometimes in the nesting season there has been a whole family. But none for weeks. I hope this is temporary; the niger seed awaits in its special feeder. Mind you, observing local migration (I don't mean going to Africa) is interesting, though it is less jolly when attractive birds are away. There always seems to be a rush of starlings at nesting time and none before or after that. 

When goldfinches do arrive, they are the prettiest thing in the garden

One thing I have noticed is that the birds are quite choosy. I have given up supplying peanuts at all, because they would be left untasted. This is in contrast to the feeder in our church garden, in the middle of the city, where we offer nothing but peanuts , and they are popular enough. At the moment the expensive sunflower hearts have all been eaten while the general purpose bird seed is untouched.

You will notice in the photos (I don't have the gear to take good bird photos - sorry) that the feeders are "squirrel proof". Grey squirrels can be attractive in a town garden, but they eat much too much for me to buy for them. To the domestic gardener their taste for digging up bulbs, and for taking one bite out of apples, is pretty irritating, though they are less irritating than neighbours' cats. In the country, though, they are a serious menace. The massive decline in red squirrels - mainly because of a virus, I believe, though also competition for food - is directly attributable to the spread of greys. And for any sort of commercial forestry - sustainable forestry is of the greatest importance - their taste for the bark of deciduous trees is very serious indeed.

This jolly fat-feeder was given me years ago. It isn't squirrel-proof. Fingers crossed!

Talking of viruses reminds me to urge you to wash your feeders regularly - say once a month. This is a bore; please invent an easily washable feeder someone. But the shortage of greenfinches is the direct result of viral infections spread from feeders. So get going with soap and water and an old toothbrush.

The best thing you can do for birds is provide habitats, natural food, and water. I love to see blackbirds pulling worms out of the lawn, sparrows and starlings splashing in the  pond, tits picking insects off the apple trees and even wood pigeons gorging themselves on the cotoneaster berries I had liked looking at. But bird-feeders that are kept clean certainly have a place in a town garden and watching them can be a treat.