With only a week to go until the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, I’m pleased to see the feeders so busy! This year, I have seen more greenfinch and house sparrows than I have had in many years and I also have two pairs of bullfinch visiting regularly. These feeders are being emptied in a day sometimes, especially with the weather becoming colder. People often ask what I feed. I have found that the most popular food is a mix of black sunflower and sunflower hearts. I also use the CJ High energy No Mess mix. I also like to feed a fat-based product. In this case it is CJ fat balls and peanut cake.
I like to change the feeder around a bit and this week, I set up this Longford guarded feeder , designed for three jars of the CJ Peanut butter for birds. I adapted one jar by slicing the lid in half and used tape to attach it to the jar. I could then put seed in the jar. I used another empty jar for suet pellets. Fitting a little CJ plastic bird table underneath, I could place some seed, almost out of reach of the squirrels. You can see I mounted the squirrel feeder really close to encourage them to use that, instead of my birds feeders…. and it does work….. most of the time!
I have 4 foxes visiting… they are pretty unpredictable regarding the time that they visit, so I have had to hide their food under a log to try to stop the rats eating it all before they arrive! This fox soon figured it out!
`during the day, I sometimes stock the log with bird seed to encourage some daytime birds down to feed. The fox seemed to enjoy a snack of sunflower seeds!
Keep an eye out on my live cameras as I build up to the Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend!