Hello and welcome to the RSPB community forum, a place to share your enthusiasm for birds, wildlife and nature in general! Many of you reading this have been on here for a while and know your way around but you may still find this information useful. However many of you may have joined recently and may still be finding out how to use the site to its best effect, the pointers in this post should help make life a bit easier, so lets get cracking! I've hyperlinked all the various places to go to get appropriate info'.
Rather than go on any further i'll post this and keep it stuck to the front page, please feel free to add any other useful links to the thread, but let's not use this as a chat thread to make it easy for people to pick out the useful bits. If you want to chat or comment about the contents please do so here. If you spy anyone floundering on the forums, feel free to point them to this thread if you think it will help.
Happy posting and thanks for joining in on the action.
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
Please can someone advise us to what to do .... We have a duck nesting near our pond apparently they do every year so the pervious owners have told us , we are so pleased they have returned BUT we have a kitten (8 months) and we are scared she will get the ducklings :( ;how can we stop her from getting them or what can we do?? Please help
Hi. I am new here and finding it very hard to navigate around the forum although not sure what bit is the actual forum and I was unable to find it via the main home page. I will post here until ive worked my way around if thats ok.
I live in Essex and recently started bird watching in my back garden so much so it's become an obsession. I have also become a keen frog and newt watcher as I have both in my 2 average ponds.
I have goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch, blue tits, great tits, pied wagtails, bullfinch, wren, dunnock, great spotted woodpeckers, blackbirds, sparrow, nightingale to name a few but what started off as one starling visiting the garden since I started making my own fat balls last week, I was shocked to see within a week there are now well in excess of 40. News must travel fast in the bird kingdom. I appreciate they are now on red alert and do not want to do anything to upset the birds but they are eating their way through the food within minutes and im talking a lot of food. They have baby starlings too. All the other birds have suddenly stopped coming as often and they are scared off so fast. The starlings take over and seem to love a good punch up be it mid air, hanging off bird feeders and the only time they behave is when the rather fat pigeons have managed to somehow squeeze into the bird house table which swings like the clappers as they barely fit inside it and the starlings have no choice but to wait, and they do wait. I have tried taking the bird feeders in and going outside to feed and monitor the situation but the starlings are sat in the trees watching me. Its like a hitcock film. As soon as I put the food up they are there before I have walked further than 10 feet away. The female blackbird is the only stayer as she has her baby in one of my bushes and she is seems to feel comfortable in my presence and will eat right next to me without a care in the world. What can I do about the starlings without offending them and seeing the other birds leave. I have taken so many pics of the birds. They are truly amazing to watch and make me feel peaceful.
I have just joined up.
Just thought i would introduce myself. My name is John. I am new to wildlife andi took up photography a couple of years ago.
Thank you very much indeed.
I am now a member of RSPB :) hope to get the hang of things around here.
Thanks very much indeed. I will be sticking around and getting involved. None of my friends are into wildlife so joining here will get me the chance to talk to like minded people.
Unknown said: Hi Essex welcome to the community from Sheffield As you say the forums can be a bit confusing but if you look at the Forum Map that TJ did for us all you will see the layout of the community or if you look on the community homepage you will see a list of the latest posts and under each one you will see the part of the community it has been posted in ie "wildlife in the garden" As for the Starlings i'm in the same situation with the large numbers but they are not putting the other birds off at the minute, if you stop putting out the food they are eating they will soon go elsewhere (they wont starve), and try leaving out things like hanging feeders if you have them out with sunflower hearts in and for the Blackbirds try scattering the food under bushes if you have them. Any help you need about the community you only need to ask.
Hi Essex welcome to the community from Sheffield
As you say the forums can be a bit confusing but if you look at the Forum Map that TJ did for us all you will see the layout of the community or if you look on the community homepage you will see a list of the latest posts and under each one you will see the part of the community it has been posted in ie "wildlife in the garden"
As for the Starlings i'm in the same situation with the large numbers but they are not putting the other birds off at the minute, if you stop putting out the food they are eating they will soon go elsewhere (they wont starve), and try leaving out things like hanging feeders if you have them out with sunflower hearts in and for the Blackbirds try scattering the food under bushes if you have them.
Any help you need about the community you only need to ask.
Birdies LG DU update.
Just catching up with some of the posts on here, Alan and Mike, I will endeavour to find out what has happened to the forum map link. As for the rest of the site, as Ben outlined on the Q and A thread, rectifying some of the unforeseen issues is being worked on as a matter of urgency by our backroom staff. The performance of the site isn't great for any of us at the moment but we will hopeful things will be improved very soon.
Update.
Forum map reinstated.