Topic: What do you feed your garden birds?

[Tulipa]

Seeing Eric and Pauline's goldfinches, and I know someone was talking about fatballs a couple of days ago, I wonder what other people put out for their birds and how successful the different foods are.  I love feeding the birds and have to top up the feeders each day they eat so much, it is wonderful.  I mostly have bluetits eating sunflower seed hearts.

[eileen]

Well I feed mine:

nyjer seeds,
peanuts,
mixed seed mix,
sunflower hearts and black sunflower seeds,
fat cakes(with dried insects in them),
fat balls,
grated cheese and cake crumbs (these are for the wrens), sultanas, raisins and currants,
apples
and lastly dehydrated mealworms.

I always have water set out for them too although it's a hard job to keep it from freezing.

Hey!!! I think the birds are better fed than I am!!  ;D ;D

[Gardengirl]

I know what you mean Eileen - I have to top up nearly every day, especially when the starling army arrive :o 

I feed mostly sunflower hearts and peanuts with the occasional crust of bread out on the front lawn away from the main feeders.  The seagulls usually swoop down for that.  They don't hang around though.  I have to be careful as we have a couple of cats, who are getting on a bit but one of them is still a bit of a huntress, so I don't deliberately put anything on the ground.  The blackbirds and chaffinches usually clean up most of the bits dropped from the feeders.

[Carol]

 :D :D :D

I feed mine  Table Seed from Cj Wildbird foods.  Peanuts are out but not used much!!!!  Sunflower hearts, Niger seed for the goldfinches.  Fat balls, and another Suet type thing with dried fruit.   Also they get bread twice a day, half apples, nectarines if any,  grated cheese, raisons or currants.  So in all they are well fed and off course plenty water out for them.
I have 2 feeding areas tho.  One at the back door with 2 tabales and another feeding area at our bedroom window with the nuts and fats balls hanging in a tree.  Oh and a half cocunut with fat in which the robin sits in.


 :D :D :D

[Georgie]

My birds get peanuts, mixed seed, dried fruit, apples, fat blocks with berries and insects in them, fat balls (net removed and dropped into a metal holder), bacon rind (cooked) roast potatoes and grated cheese.  They also get food from the plants such as berries from the Pyrocantha and Cotoneaster and seeds from various flowers.  I don't get any 'exotic' birds but I'm just happy to get any.   ;D

G xx

[amanda21]

I didn't feed the birds until this year as with two cats I thought it would be like fattening them up before the inevitable murder!!  ;)  but I was bought a bird feeder and some seed for Christmas and it is hanging in our small tree totally covered with sparrows and starlings!  The cat is sitting the other side of the conservatory door drawling!  :-\   Mind you my neighbours have fed the birds and consequently fed my cats for years!

[Twospot Ladybird]

I feed mine on:-

Bread broken up into small pieces, dampened with a little water and Sunflower oil

Sulatnas halved and soaked in water

Grated Mild Cheddar

Peanuts in a mesh feeder and a caged mesh feeder

Robin food mixed with Sunflower seeds in a small ceramic pot placed under an upturned wire hanging basket

My own recipe fat feeders.

Just re-read Tulippa's original post and realised I should also add that the above is what my birds like.

And have just bought Sunflower seed hearts for my caged seed feeder and Suet Pellets with insects to try (that is for the birds to try not me  ;D).

Can't afford to top up every day so I only refill when feeders are empty, have also found that putting the food out (stuff that goes on the ground) before first light means that there's none left when the Pigeons arrive  ;D Going to be a bit difficult in the Summer though.

[Lady of the Land]

I have plenty of sunflower seeds, from sunflowers grown on the allotment. What is best to do with them, do I just put them on bird table or put these on the grass. They have the seed coat still surrounding the seed- is there any easy way of removing this?

Thank you

[Mrs Ava]

I did in 2004, but our neighbours cat started stalking them, and then had a next of bluet+ts from the tree...ples we had rats move into our compost bins, so I decided to reduce the amount of feed.....however, our local farm shop sell big packs of 8 fat balls for 99p so whenever i am in, I pick a pack up and have them hanging from our tree.  I see t+ts and other small birds going crazy for them.  In the spring and summer when the starling family that nests in our roof move in, I do chuck the kids left over breakfast toast and dry cereal out, along with biscuit and cake crumbs as I know they will be gone in seconds.  I also garden as organically as I can, so have lots of bugs, and lots of birds.  We have a gorgeous thrush who uses our first step as a snail smashing anvil, and I grow things like teasles and grasses and leave the heads on for the small seed eating birdies.  Not as good as you lot, but I think I do okay, and I know a lot of the neighbours feed the birdies also.

[Whippet]

Peanuts in the holders.

A mix of oats, rice, dried fruit and fat.

[Twospot Ladybird]

Suet pellets that I mentioned earlier are going down a treat  ;D  ;D  ;D  ;D