All animals have to have their place on this homestead, if they don't they have to go. Luckily I love watching the birds in the garden, in fact we all do.
I treated the girls to some new feeders for the birds the other day and I was going to buy a big bag of bird food until I looked closer and saw that it was mainly wheat with a few sunflower seeds! No chance! Instead I brought a bag of sunflower seeds and mixed it with the wheat I keep for the chickens (I get that for free from my father - lucky bugger that I am).
This with some stale bread and an old apple or two should keep the blue tits happy!
Who else loves feeding the birds? Which garden bird is your favourite?
Kev - we looove feeding the birds here! we have 2 actual feeders, an old wooden coffee table with legs that we put food on, and an old wooden coffee table sans legs on the ground that we put food on. we love watching the birds and so do our cats. our 2 cats that we took from the city when we moved here have always let birds land on their heads they are that lazy! they love watching the birds too! our little cat that came out of the woods starving doesn't like them so much, chases them but doesn't try to catch them anymore. he simply puts up with them.
ReplyDeletebut just as a note of interest - i read several years ago that during cold weather/winter, the birds have a harder time finding drinking/bathing water so we always have a bird bath in the yard and fill it every day but especially during cold snaps when the water can freeze, we change the water several times a day.
your girls are so cute and just think of the memories you are building with them! and be sure to expect a bunch of volunteer sunflowers popping up all over the yard this summer - bahahahah! some of the sunflower seeds will land in the right spot at the right time and blammo - a beautiful sunflower will appear! we get them all over the yard every summer.
our favourite bird - every single one of them! we get ravens (who jump on the roof to wake us to come out and feed them), crows, morning doves, bluejays, goldfinches, redfinches, grackles, our resident bald eagles, woodpeckers, osprey, robins and in the summer - hummingbirds! we love them all!
sending much love! your friend,
kymber
We feed the birds, the other half is a professional birdwatcher if you can imagine such a thing exists!You may find you have to invest in a squirrel trap though, once they get to see the sunflower seeds. We also feed the hedgehogs and have a stealth cam so we can see them coming. Favourite garden bird, gosh there are so many, I guess Tree Sparrow because they're so rare round here these days.
ReplyDeleteWe feed the birds, those that don't help themselves to the chicken food that is!
ReplyDeleteFaves are.. dunnock, long tailed tit and nuthatch.
Like Kymber, we have a couple of bird baths too.
Gill
lots of bird feeders up here, they are canny and will hang around the chicken and duck run when I am feeding them they also hang around the goats and alpacas at feed time, I need to make up more fat feeders on my to do list, I dont have a favorite but I dont like Magpies noisy bullies.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to put a bird feeder together, make the table and the feeders themselves from scratch etc. Thanks Kev, I think you've just convinced me to add yet another project to my list! haha does it ever end? All the best, Fast-Daddy
ReplyDeleteHubby mak s his own fat balls and we use loads of nuts. I love it when the starlings swoop, we call them thugs, but they are interesting to watch
ReplyDeleteI love feeding the birds, but I just can't afford it anymore. We live at the edge of the woods, though, so we see a lot of feathered friends anyway.
ReplyDeleteWe've only seen long tailed tits once or twice this winter and the goldfinches who were here earlier have disappeared and just 1 fieldfare eating the windfall apples but 100s of bluetits,chaffinches and great tits, spotty woodpecker and 2 robins. Yep we like birdwatching too!
ReplyDeleteIt's almost time for me to buy those nasty fat ball things for the birds. Up until now they've just had a seed mix. We have much the same birds as you would have in the UK. Tits, sparrows, finches, black caps, woodpeckers, etc. In the summer we occasionally see a Hoopoe, but they're rare.
ReplyDeletewe love feeding the birds and have feeders in the garden but never get any birds on them, I know another neighbour feeds them and proably my cats put them off but we continue to keep replenishing the seed with new in the hopes that they will come, maybe when the weather turns cold.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand we feed them in our nearby park and get much pleasure from it.
Briony
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I feed the birds from the forest inadvertently. After my chickens eat, the wild birds come down in droves and peck up the left over cracked corn.
ReplyDeleteIt's something I always mean to do but fill up the feeder about twice a year!
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