Fetch Birdwatchers
1 lurker |
166 watchers
Jun 2016
10:38am, 16 Jun 2016
1,085 posts
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Surelynot
I am having to fill my seed feeders daily at the moment. Must be so many young mouths to feed. I'm finding the larget birds are monopolising them and perforning all sorts of acrobatics to get at the food. Woodes and jacdaws mostly. The smaller birds are having to nip in quickly. |
Jun 2016
11:13am, 16 Jun 2016
875 posts
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Fragile Do Not Bend
A couple of flipping squirrels have found my feeders. I don't want to have to buy a load of squirrel proof ones so I tried putting the mild (& out of date) chilli powder I found at the back of the cupboard on the feeders but it didn't work. I'll have to try some of the proper hot stuff instead.
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Jun 2016
12:04pm, 16 Jun 2016
19,953 posts
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GlennR
Fragile, my feeder hangs from a wire. I cut the bottom off an empty tonic bottle and ran the wire through it, then on to the tree to which it's fastened. This has had the squirrels baffled for months. The wire has to be proper steel though, otherwise the furry bastards will chew through it. Green gardening wire is not tough enough. |
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Jun 2016
3:52pm, 16 Jun 2016
876 posts
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Fragile Do Not Bend
That wouldn't work here - the feeders hang off a big wooden post in the ground and there is a shrub underneath that the squirrels can stand on and reach up. I'd have to either move the post or cut the shrub down.
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Jun 2016
8:40am, 17 Jun 2016
4,646 posts
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icemaiden
No furry b*stards here except the cats, one less sparrow yesterday. Woodpecker and baby this morning, most pleased with them. |
Jun 2016
9:00am, 17 Jun 2016
870 posts
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steve45
It's Jackdaws down here that have discovered how to hang more easily from the hanging feeders; feral pigeons are much fewer thanks to a local hardware shop closing and ceasing throwing out grain for what was a flock of about 125 birds. Clever birds nevertheless--hang and swing and cause the seed to spill to the floor!
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Jun 2016
9:28am, 17 Jun 2016
1,095 posts
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Surelynot
The woodpigeons look as if the expend more energy balancing on the feeders than they actually get in food.
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Jun 2016
9:39am, 17 Jun 2016
299 posts
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J2R
Goldfinches are our commonest garden bird here (leafy suburban Norwich), by far. Strange how that's come about - when I was a boy, I used to be excited to see one. OTOH, I was excited to see a garden first the other day, after 7 years in this house - a house sparrow! It is most peculiar, 100 metres up the road they are all over the place, but here, non-existent - bizarre that they can be so local. We've had redpolls in the garden over the winter, bramblings, siskins, but no house sparrow until now. On the greenfinch question, I noticed their numbers were seriously down in the last 3-4 years but I'm definitely seeing a lot more of them in the garden this year. I wonder whether the population has been making a recovery from the disease. |
Jun 2016
10:30am, 17 Jun 2016
1,682 posts
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jacdaw
There are probably no holes for the sparrows to nest in J2R. These days they seem to stay close to where they nest if there is also a good local food source in my experience. I'm sure in the past city centres were populated by sparrows that were constantly coming in from more optimal areas, and if the population in optimal areas doesn't rise too high they aren't forced to colonise sub-optimal habitats. We had almost no sparrows here when we moved in; since the finches (green and chaff) have declined, the sparrow numbers have grown massively. They nest under my eaves. But the sparrows may have been at a national low back in 1999 (goes away to check)... (lowest pop levels in about 1999 and again in 2007ish, better since). More info here: bto.org |
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Jun 2016
11:41am, 17 Jun 2016
300 posts
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J2R
jacdaw, there's a nice triple sparrow box on the back of the house if they would deign to investigate it! Actually, that's been occupied recently by opportunist blue tits and great tits, but I'm sure sparrows would love it. They also have all the food they could want hanging nearby in the garden for them. I think there may be some issue to do with missing hedge cover between here and where they are abundant (as I say, just 100 metres away), otherwise I'm sure they would at least explore this way. I write this to the sound of a blackcap singing away in the garden. That's another bird I never expected to be a garden regular. |
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