Wildlife gardening hits the High Street.

wilkinsons wild bird food

There was a time, not so long ago, when if you wanted anything more than just a few peanuts to feed the birds you would either buy mail order (or online with today’s technology) or you’d stock up on your visit to a garden centre. Feeding wildlife is big business now and increasingly the High Street shops are offering an impressive range.

Wilkinsons boost their wildlife range.

One example of this is Wilkinsons who have just launched a brand new range of bird seeds and other wildlife products. Rolled out locally here last week the bird food section has suddenly jumped from a few bags of peanuts, seeds and fatballs to a whole range of specialist food aimed at particular bird types.

There’s soft seed mixes for songbirds, small seed mixes specifically for the finches, berry flavoured suet for robins, there’s tubs and mega tubs of mealworms and a whole host of bird food in flashy new branded bags. Then there’s the range of Bill Oddies crumble mixes and even tucked away was Chapelwoods Hedgehog food and duck and swan food. The only type of wild food I didn’t spot was the squirrel food.

Too much to choose from!

I don’t mind admitting that when I popped in yesterday for a few extra fatballsI was quite taken aback and didn’t quite know what to buy as the selection as so great. Anyone who has spent time with me in the local deli trying to decide on what flavour of cheese to buy will know the dilemma I was in.

It’s not just food that has had a bit of a make over and range increase at Wilkinsons. There was a good selection of bird feeders including ceramic ones, hedgehog houses, solitary bee homes and lacewing houses. I didn’t spot any bird houses but they may have been in the gardening section.

It’s quite obvious that anyone who loves their garden wildlife and has a local Wilkinsons will be making regular visits to the shop. The prices were very competitive even against online bulk buying. A tub of 50 fatballs on special offer at just over £5 is not to be complained over. Now if only they will drop those green nets and just sell the fatballs as they come. I’ve heard of cases where birds have got their legs entangled in the nets and some have even broken a leg. The nets, apart from being a danger to birds, are not recyclable and can blow away and litter the area. The RSPB sell net free fatballs so come on Wilkinsons make the change!

First bird fed back in 6th century.

There is, of course, sound financial reasoning behind the move of wildlife products into the High Street shops. It’s big business. Ever since Saint Serf of Fife fed that first robin back in the 6th century feeding birds has become a major hobby for British gardeners.

In 1890-91 the British national newspapers put out a call for people to feed their wild birds over the extremely cold winter and the birds haven’t looked back since. It’s not just the winter months now that we feed the birds but birds can expect year round supplements from their friendly gardeners. Today over £144 million is spent each year on bird food alone.

It’s not just the type of food that you put out that can determine the species that come to your garden. There was a study done which showed that the colour of the bird feeder you used could influence the species. Blue tits liked blue feeders while great and coal tits tended to shy away from blue and yellow feeders. The researchers suggested that regular changes in colour of feeder could help with increasing diversity of bird species in the garden.

Does bird feeding influence natural behaviour of birds?

There are arguments that so much human bird feeding is causing problems with the natural behaviour of the birds. There seems to be evidence that blackcaps that migrate to Britain have different beaks to blackcaps that migrate to Spain because bird feeding is now such a big part of their diet – the Spanish blackcaps have beaks able to feed on wild food such as olives.

There’s also indications that long term feeding of bluetits can cause a reduction in brood size – though the question that needs to be asked is does the increased survivability of bluetits from feeding exceed that reduction in brood sizes in the long term. In other words fewer eggs may be laid but are more chicks survive to adulthood?

Whether feeding birds in our gardens influence the natural behaviour of birds or not one things is clear and that is garden birds are increasing in number on the whole and it brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. If you live in a town the garden birds may be your closest and sometimes only link to the natural world.