Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)

Orionaut

Orionaut

Orionaut

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Except that it isn't Tuppence a bag any more and in this cold weather the feeders are getting through around 4Lb per day :eek:

The trouble with Bird feeding is that it is like mastermind, once you have started, you have to continue because they become reliant on the food supply (Especially at this time of year)

If you stop, they wont just go elsewhere. (Other birds are already elsewhere) They will most likely starve.

I am probably spending more feeding them than I do feeding myself at the moment.

Anybody else with an expensive Bird habit? :p
Unfortunately I also have an expensive Pussy habit to go with it. Special renal Cat food for a 20 year old Tortie who could **** for England so I need to be careful what I feed her to help to preserve what is left of her kidneys. over £100 a pop off the web, but at least it lasts 3 months per order:( In terms of the household food budget i think I must come third! :p
 
Yeah i started feeding them here. Mostly great **** and blue ****. Its already been frozen solid for a month.

We went away for a week and they cleaned us out then just left.
not seen many since.
5kg of peanuts here is 15 quid near enough so its a joke...

i have a video of a blue tit last year in minus -24oC so cold and starving just sitting on the window sill pecking at a frozen block of cookie dough i put out for them lol

it was funny as hell but sad at the same time....
 
feed them occasionally ,not all the time ,went to see the starling murmurings at rough tor afew weeks back ,really amazing sight
 
If you've got secure space to store the food look at Twootz.com or similar, they're fairly slow to deliver but much cheaper than buying in store.

We have an expensive bird habit, and a reasonably expensive badger one as well, getting dozens of gold finches, numerous **** assorted other finches and a regular badger.
We ended up buying several of the old fashioned metal garden bins and we get the bird food in 12.5 or 25kg lots which means that we're only buying most of the feeds about every two months, the Yodal Guy must hate our house as he usually arrives with 50-100kg of bird food :p

IIRC for things like the suet we're paying about £25 for 25kg (it's about half, or a quarter of the price it is at the local stores), and the peanuts range from around £30-45 depending on the exact type for 25kg.
I tend to buy chopped peanuts to go on the floor and in the feeders most of the time, but the last lot were chopped extra fine so I ordered some cheap normal peanuts for the feeders for now as I would need to get more in about 2-3 weeks anyway.

My October bird food order..
Berry Suet Pellets 25 kg £25.00 1 £0.00 £0.00 £25.00
Sunflower Hearts 25 kg £28.39 1 £0.00 £0.00 £28.39
Chopped Peanuts 25 kg £40.99 1 £0.00 £0.00 £40.99
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Regy53 said:
the last bird i had in my garden was eating right from my hand, it was just like feeding the pony
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An old Girl friend of mine (Who has since sadly died :( ) was an avid Bird feeder and they would actually come into her kitchen at feeding time and line up on the cooker hood. If the door was shut they would peck on the windows to attract her attention.

Birds are very smart animals and once they realise that you are a friend they will become very trusting.
 
We get a variety of visitors when the bird feed is out. Got to feed them at this time of year.
 
Nah.

If we have a loaf that's started to go hard, we break it up into crumbs and toss out at the bottom of the garden for the birds. But that's hardly a common thing.
 
Can we say no? Well that's ok then.

I notice the mods got excited about a little innuendo. How pathetic. We can have an Xmas hotties thread but a little word play and it's deleted.
 
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Too many cats around here for bird feeders, it would be a slaughter.
 
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NoobCannon said:
Stop feeding the birds and feed the cat the results?

Win win?

(Not sure if deleted posts suggest same thing)
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Earlier posts were a bit "Finbar Saunders" :D

Since I admit I was being a bit "Finbar Saunders" ;) myself, I think deleting them was a bit unfair. :/

Nevertheless, the serious question still stands.

Feeding Birds on a regular basis is a huge responsibility. Once you have started you have to continue (To the extent that I have seriously considered putting something in my will to that effect)

EG, I remember a program about a Guy in the USA who started putting out sugar water decades ago to attract migrating Humming Birds.

Today He gets through many Gallons/Day!

The migration routes have actually changed in response to this food resource.

If he (or his heirs) stop doing this, 100,000's of migrating Humming birds would die!

It is actually one hell of a responsibility.

Only do it if you intend to commit to it! :cool:
 
We have a squadron of sparrows that live in the random stone on the front of our house, so I feed them.

I used to feed the wild doves and half the neighborhood birds with old or discarded fantail dove food, but that just attracted the sparrow hawk.
My fantails eat a fair bit.
 
I used to feed the birds all the time, Sunflower seed, Niger seed and peanuts. Unfortunately after a tree was cut down they stopped using my garden as much. I still get quite a few visitors though, just not a garden full. However the advantage is that there is less mess to clean up if you know what I mean.
 
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