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[Bette]

Brilliant san! 
Bette x

[CLKD]

Glad the bird flew away too - well done!

I told you: I'm your Dad and you're not going out with *him*!

[CLKD]

Last night I found a small stick insect on the dishwasher door, it nearlly got squashed  - it was way away from it's glass 'cage' and was newly hatched.  I cleaned them out today and could only find 3 adults, 1 small and the tiny so I've lost 1 adult and 1 small    .......... I have never had a huge hatch out    ......... pity, I'd love just once to find lots on the ceiling!

Picked roses for the house and raspberries for the neighbours as I can't eat them all.  Spuds will be ready during the week, brocolli is almost seeded so the chooks will get that.  No sign of our wren though 

SLUGS+++ !!!!

[Taz2]

They do come mrs p. It depends on what you are feeding of course but my feeders are shared by the wood pigeons, sparrows, finches, robins etc. Blackbirds are ground feeders and don't like to visit bird tables or feeders normally. It can take around three weeks for the small birds to actually accept a new feeding station.

What type of seed do you have in the feeders?

Taz x

[CLKD]

You will find that it sorts itself out - at present a lot of birds are away moulting so you wont' see them.  It's sparrows, 3 blackbirds and a few tits at the meal worms which aren't disappearing as much today as they did last week.  It's that time of year  .  Only put out a little bit at first, I find that the birds come a lot more if there isn't much there ............

[san]

Sounds like we have the same feeder Mrs P 
We get a robin some tits, starlings .... and don't forget the squirrels 

We have had a woodpecker 

[Taz2]

At the moment I am feeding a Guardman wild bird seed mix which I add black sunflower seeds to although I also use Jacobi Jayne as they are mail order. This is great for the sparrows who flock to the feeders - eighteen this morning - and the other birds also like it. I feed niger seed (special sort of feeder) for the goldfinches and also feed, separately, sunflower hearts specifically for the smaller birds. All the finches love these but my goldfinches adore them and I have now got a population of anything between 15 and 30 for most of the day. They have all brought their young which is lovely to see. The robins also love the sunflower hearts. Whole sunflowers are too hard for some of the birds to crack but they love the hearts. I have a small feeder with peanuts in.

If you want to put out a breakfast for other birds such as starlings I feed mine wholemeal breadcrumbs (very finely crumbled) digestive biscuits, grated cheese and sultanas which I soak in water overnight.This is especially important during the breeding season in case the adult blackbirds (who adore them) feed them to their young in a dry state. They then swell in the birds stomachs which isn't good. The blackbirds need their food scattered on the ground.

I have been feeding the birds in our tiny garden for 30 years and have the following species. Blue and Great Tits, Robins, Blackbirds (ground feeding birds) chaffinches, greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches, dunnock, wren, wood pigeon, collared dove, magpie, jay, jackdaw, rook (occasionally) green and spotted woodpeckers and a song thrush now and again. The important thing is that once you start you have to be consistent. To stop feeding them once they are used to getting food in your garden is the equivalent of us with empty cupboards toddling off to the supermarket to find that sainsburys/tescos/asda/morrisons etc have got empty shelves and we haven't got enough fuel in our tanks to go anywhere else.

Taz x

[Pennyfarthing]

Our local £1 shops have suet blocks (with berries and nuts) and also bags of mealworms which are great value and much cheaper than I was paying at the pet shops.

Anybody else notice that the housemartins and swallows have disappeared again?  Apparently it is to do with the wet weather and there are no insects for them to feed off.  I miss them every evening - they used to be chirping away outside the office window.

[CLKD]

An owl woke me in the early hours but was too dopey to get up to look for it 

[Christine662]

We've got one of those feeders Mrs P.

On Sunday we had a great spotted woodpecker for the 2nd time...

daily its blue & great tits, sparrows, on the lawn...blackbirds, thrushes, pigeons & the much hated maggies!!

In winter a male pheasant always comes to hoover up any seeds etc that have fallen & we get redwings too in the winter.


They will come to you when they realise its there.
Stumpy xx

[Joyce]

Hope someone can answer this.  Whilst down south we went for walk along by a canal.  Saw lots of wildlife but one thing has me flummoxed. In the canal there was a tube like thing under the water, looked like it was coming up from the bottom and at very regular intervals bubbles were coming up.  Now hubby laughed at me when  I showed him, but he couldn't answer my question.  He suggested it was flies on top of the water, but it wasn't that.
Have tried googling and it came up as elodea, but looked nothing like that.

[CLKD]

Animal, vegetable or mineral?  Could be an eel did it wriggle, occassionally they will surface to grab air.

[changesbabe]

Taz I have a question for you hope you don't mind. My hubby is the one who feeds the birds in our house - throughout the winter it is great to see so many birds at the feeder. However hubby says that we should not feed the birds in the summer as that encourages them to become lazy and they lose the ability to hunt for food themselves. Is he right? The garden is quiet in the summer with birds as the feeders are empty. Xxx

[CLKD]

RSPB recommending feeding all year round but whether this is because they sell bird supplies?  I feed live meal worms, sun flower seeds and occasionally pea-nuts all year the robin and blackbirds hop round my feet for meal worms.  If there is their usual 'wild' bird food they will take that too - currently I have a rose thick with aphids which the tits are welcome too!

[Taz2]

I feed all year round - advice from the RSPB and BTO is that this is necessary. Many species of birds have taken a hammering over the past twenty years or so and by feeding in the summer this gives the parent birds a quick fix of energy to enable them to forage for natural food for their youngsters thus ensuring that more birds make it into adulthood. The blue tits, for instance, fill up on the seeds and then have more energy to find the caterpillars which are the main food for the nestlings.

The added bonus is that you get to see the young when they have left the nest. My apple tree becomes alive with baby goldfinches, blue tits,greenfinches and bullfinches out on their first flight. It is lovely to see. However, as the birds feed from around 5 a.m. this time of year until 8.30 pm it costs a fortune!

http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/whentofeed.aspx

Taz x