10 Top tips for feeding birds

Top tips for feeding garden birds.

The longest day has been and gone and with it the majority of our garden birds have completed their breeding cycle. Apart from a few late second attempts our wild birds are no longer feeding their broods and most fledglings are now pretty well developed and looking after themselves. It’s a good time to look back on what is probably going to be my last season of feeding garden birds in the UK.

These are my 10 top tips for feeding garden birds. There’s no scientific basis to it, they are just based on my own personal observations. There’s no particular order of preference to them. I hope that they can be of use to someone who is just starting out on the road to feeding their local wildlife.

1. Don’t worry if you’ve not got a garden.

I don’t have a garden. What I do have though are windows and there are plenty of window based feeders available on the market for you to use. I’ve also had great success with just putting suet and seed cakes out on window sills. Make sure you put them in a cage and secure the cage so the food don’t drop off onto someones head!

You may be able to make use of a door. I have a door that leads out to the roof of the floor below, it’s my fire escape. While I can not put bird feeding stations on to the roof I have made use of the door. There’s plenty of cheap coat racks available on the market that secures by hanging over a door. Get a cheap thin one do a quick 90 degree bend to it and hey presto a bird feeder hanger that you can hang over your back door – over even use with a sash window.

2. Get plenty of fat balls in stock.

Where ever I live the one thing I can be sure of and that is the most popular food will be the fat balls. Once your local birds have a taste for them you will be surprised just how quickly they will munch their way through them. Always keep a good reserve of them at home.

It’s not just the song birds who will take advantage of them. When the smaller birds feed on them by hanging off the container quite a lot will fall to the ground and that will attract a lot of ground feeders like blackbirds, collared doves and thrushes.

3. Get suet pellets for the nesting season.

This is the first year I’ve tried suet pellets. The ones I bought contained mealworms and insects and were from Chapelwood. What I found this year was that they were very popular early in the year but are now rarely taken. One of the things I did notice was that the birds were taking the pellets away rather than eating them on the bird table.

At a guess I would presume that the adult birds were using the pellets to feed the chicks and now that the breeding season is over the pellets are no longer as useful as they were.

4. Get suet cakes for the fledglings.

When you start seeing the fledglings appear get some suet cakes available for them. The young birds love them. You need to be a bit selective over which type to buy. I’ve tested the suet cakes with fruit, the ones with seeds and the ones with mealworms and by far the most popular are the suet cakes with mealworms.

I tend to find the demand for the suet cakes to be pretty seasonal with much more being eaten during the early spring when there are lots of fledglings about. They need a lot of easy digestible high energy food. But as they grow they move on to other food sources such as the fat balls and seeds. A month ago I was putting out a new suet cake every day but now a cake will last 4 or 5 days.

5. Clean your bird feeders regularly.

Bird feeders can be an ideal way for disease to be transmitted between birds. The feeders themselves can harbour the disease or the close proximity of other birds as they feed can transmit disease and parasites. While you can not do anything about the bird to bird transmission you can ensure that your feeders and tables are clean.

I tend to wash my feeders out every week and once a month I’ll soak them for a few hours in a water bath with a couple of baby bottle sterilisation tablets. Because my feeders are over a hard surface every couple of days I’ll sweep up any seed casings or food that’s dropped and every week I pour a bucket of mild disinfectant solution over the area.

6. Don’t put feeders too close to nest sites.

I’m sure you would not like crowds of people hanging outside your bedroom window eating their fish and chips. Give nesting birds a bit of privacy and security by keeping any nest boxes and feeding stations apart. Birds are territorial and if feeding birds get to close to a nest then the nest owner will spend much of the day chasing off invading birds rather than looking after it’s young.

I would go far as to say if you only have a small garden then make a choice between feeding stations or nesting boxes don’t do both.

7. Add variety to food and feeders.

The more variety of food and feeder types you have the more chance you have of attracting a wider range of birds. Having feeders at different levels also gives the birds additional choice and can be much more entertaining to watch.

I have regular bluetits come to my hanging feeders and they start at the top by munching on the niger seeds before climbing around the hanging frames of the bird table. On the bird table they will spend some time eating the seeds or the suet pellets and then climb down the hangers below to explore the fat balls and peanuts. The tree sparrows and the other hand tend to fly directly to the fatball holder.

Most birds are pretty inquisitive so if you give them a variety of feeders and food they will stay longer exploring and feeding.

8. Be patient if you have just started feeding the birds.

If you are a beginner in feeding your local garden birds then have a bit of patience. You should start to see birds arriving within the first week and within a month you should have a stream of regular visitors to your bird feeding station.

Birds are not going to arrive overnight after putting out your first bag of peanuts. In the early weeks and months you may only attract the most common birds but as your bird feeders become more established then you should see a greater number of both individuals and species.

Once you start feeding birds keep to a regular routine as the birds will become used to it and change their habits just for you!

9. Don’t be frightened of fights.

If you are establishing a new feeding area then you will invariably see what appears to be fights between birds. Even bird feeders that have been around for years will have fights between birds. Don’t assume that you need to put up more feeders because the ones you have are overcrowded. It’s just that the birds are establishing their status. Things will settle down as soon as the pecking order to sorted out.

The fights are much more to do with bravado rather than any real intention to cause injury to each other. As fledglings mature to adulthood they will also face up to each other to establish their own place in the bird table hierarchy. Unless you’re planning on providing a bird feeder for each individual bird then just sit back and enjoy the show – it’s all part of nature.

10. Buy a good bird id book.

It’s great watching the birds come to your feeders but it’s even better when you know what you are looking at. If you are new to bird watching and garden bird feeding then invest in a good bird book. You need to try and get a book that highlights both adult and juvenile plumage and also the differences between male and female birds.

Because I don’t have a garden but have my feeders either attached to the window or hanging down from the door I can get pretty close to the birds – it’s surprising just how close you can get once they are used to the feeder. This means it’s very easy for me to identify the species. If you have a bird feeder in the garden then you may also need to invest in a pair of binoculars to see the details and make a positive id.

Hopefully these tips will be of use to some people and I’m hoping that tropical birds will be as willing to come to bird feeders as British birds. I shall have to wait and see.