Bird food

[Kathy]

I've not been feeding the birds lately. Since becoming adopted by two cats, I feel less certain about putting out "bait" for small feathery things.

I did spot a family of long-tailed tits on next-doors feeders earlier in the week. One of them had a short tail and had me utterly confused until I saw the rest of the flock.

You could say it had me stumped.

[SteveC]

I've not been feeding the birds lately. Since becoming adopted by two cats, I feel less certain about putting out "bait" for small feathery things.

Sometimes putting out food actually makes them safer from cats as you get more birds so there are more pairs of eyes looking out for predators.

I suspect, however, that having our three wandering around the garden for the first portion of the 'hour' didn't help our scores.  I don't have the individual scores, but we were one species down on last year (which surprised me - I thought it there would have been three or four less).  Numbers were very similar.  And I saw the first greenfinch we've had in the garden for ages.

S

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

It's taken them a while to find it, but they've eaten all the fat balls and had a wee taste of the peanuts but ignored everything else, the ungrateful little tweety fuckers.

ETA: pmsl. I put new fat balls out, put the debris in the bin and then went downstairs to put the recycling in the bins. Downstairs, I looked up at the feeders and realised why the fat balls all disappeared within a week - a very agile crow (well, maybe - black feathers, black beak, black legs) was hanging from the feeder and having a good go at the contents.