[rusticranger]

Hello everyone!

I thought I'd start a little thread to see what you guys are feeding the birds with in your garden?

At the moment, I am putting out black sunflower seeds in one feeder and peanuts in another. In an old bird cage I found lying around I've got some fat balls out too.

The sunflower seeds are attracting the usual suspects and the peanuts are great for attracting the woodpeckers.

Anyone got some tips for attracting finches or any other particular birds with?

Happy Christmas!

Tom

[Bodger]

Tom. The very best feed to attract finches into an area is niger seed. Since we started keeping our feeders topped up with it all year round, we've never looked back.
We've gone from the occasional goldfinch visiting us, to having thirty or forty in a sitting and Siskins are almost as numerous. I can't recommend niger seed highly enough. With the exception of hawfinches, I think that I'm correct in saying that we attract just about every British finch.
We also feed sunflower seeds, fat balls and peanuts.

[darkbrowneggs]

Finches normally like those little black niger seeds, though they work best fed from the special niger seed feeders.  When Mum was alive we had one full of niger seeds and one full of de-shelled sunflower seeds.  The table was a literal "swarm" of birds from dawn to dusk, and they even perched on the window sill and peered in through the windows if we had let them run low


I gave up on the peanuts as the grey squirrels were a real nuisance with them - they don't seem to bother with the sunflower seeds, but the nuthatches and woodpeckers are just as keen on them as on the peanuts.


Ebay is the cheapest place to source them.


I also used to have live mealworms and hand feed the robins in the winter  One got so tame that in the summer when it was feeding its young it would come and land on my hat if I hadnt given it enough.  It made me laugh as it must have had 5 youngsters in the nest so always tried to take 5 worms with it in one beakful, but could only ever manage 4 at one go


Sadly this winter I have decided not to offer much food, as if I move out in the middle of winter which is highly likely the new people moving in are unlikely to carry on with the feeding as they say their youngest is frightened of birds, and all animals in fact.  And I wouldn't want the amount of birds we regularly fed to be reliant on a food source which disappeared just at the very moment it was needed most

[shygirl]

we had a robin that used to wait every morning in the same place whilst i fed the pigs, they get so tame, its  lovely.

[Louise Gaunt]

The birds in our garden aren't interested in niger seeds, even the finches! I put out a seed mix on a table and in a bowl on the ground and have two nut ball feeders and a seed dispenser. We get all kinds of tit, nuthatch, woodpecker and sometimes a gold finch. And I have once seen a gold crest in the conifers

[Rosemary]

A peanut feeder mainly for the woodpeckers; fat balls; ground feeder seed in the morning and a feeder seed mix.

If we have any over ripe apples and pears, I put them out for the numerous blackbirds.

We get loads of sparrows, a few starlings, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, woodpeckers, goldfinches (look like little footmen) plus collared doves and pigeons (Bertie's favourites)

[sokel]

We have peanut feeders, mixed seed feeders,Fat balls, Niger seeds. Piece of fat tied to a tree, fresh shredded Beef Suet, fruit and live mealworms.
we get all of the tit family, sparrows, various finches, Nuthatch's, tree Creepers, wrens, robins, Greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers, Blackbirds, thrushes and doves all visit the garden most days

[Rosemary]

We've got wrens - how could I forget them, they're my favorite bird. And robins, like them too. And chaffinches and yellowhammers (love the fluorescent yellowhammers). And buzzards. And pheasants.

[Victorian Farmer]

I'm just about to build a bird area for dad to look out to .I'm ordering trees and bushes that they like .I feed fat and wield bird feed sun flower .

[Bodger]

[Rosiecrad]

I love feeding the birds, I noticed over the summer we had hardly any visitors but there are LOTS of trees and bushes full of berries on our land so think they prefered them.
I feed peanuts, fat balls, a garden bird mix and niger seed.
I don't seem to attract many fincehs but there are loads about here but a neighbour behind out house feeds birds too and all the finches seem to go to her garden.
On my feeders I get all of the tit family, GS woodpeckers ( havn't seen these for a while) goldfinch, robin, black cap.
Around the smallholding I've seen gold crest, which are divine, wren, Bbird, pigeon, all the corvid family, bullfinches. tree creeper and nuthatchThere must be lots more that I havn't seen or identified.
Rosie