Monday 30 July 2012

Feed the Birds.

We feed the birds all year round.  Some people stop in the Summer thinking the birds have plenty without any supplements.  Wrong!  Those birds have come to rely on you.



We supply peanuts, sunflower seeds, wild bird seed, niger seed, fat balls and scraps from our food, toast, bacon rind, porridge, also from the cat food, left biscuits, all well soaked. (Cat biscuits swell in the stomach, ok for cats, not for birds, so make sure they are soaked and have expanded .)



Although we do have many starlings we have to wait till night fall for them all to gather up from all around and create this.  A Murmuration.






The Rooks, Crows and Jackdaws can be quite bullying.


But the Warblers are quite sweet.





And the Goldfinches are beautiful.


This year we had a tree creeper.  Not feeding on anything we provided, other than the tree he investigated.


Woodpeckers are regular visitors.



Okay, we get the doves, but not the Peacocks.


The pleasure we get from the birds is just fantastic.  We have seen lots of baby birds being shown the feeders and the water provided.


I have an unending panorama of subjects to paint and draw.


We send in our counts to the British Trust for Ornithology for their records, on a weekly basis.


25 different birds is our usual count.  What's yours?  If you have never looked before, why not!


And if the pheasants dont mop up the bits on the ground, there is always this wee chappie.

5 comments:

Mum said...

The goldfinch is my favourite here - oh and also the sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie.
Love from Mum
xx

BadPenny said...

Lots of birds visiting us which is lovely. I put out all sorts of scraps & chase the cats away.
I adore your mousey - we have a few of those too x

Susan T said...

Sadly we don't seem to have half the birds in our garden that we used to, it is probably down to the very tubby cat who lives next door.

Laura Whispering said...

25 different birds?! That's amazing!

We had a visit from a baby sparrow this evening ..In our dining room, after the cat brought it in! Thankfully it was uninjured and, after a brief spell under the sofa, managed to find its way home :)

Anonymous said...

Feeding the birds this year has just been too much for us, which I feel badly about. I've also been a bit paralysed by warnings about needing to clean out birdfeeders every few weeks to avoid giving the birds diseases which kill them off. Before we lapsed, the crows, magpies, doves and pigeons seemed to dominate. Not that I bear them any ill will...