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Feeder advice

Beaverton123
05/05/2021 09:22

Hi all, am new to birding in the sense that i've recently setup a bird feeder (guardman hanging feeder, mesh feeder and yellow jacobi jayne nyger feed seeder) with sunflower hearts, peanut feeder and nyger seeds.  Also have a small meal worm feeder which i've attached to one of our confiers. It's been a little over a week and we've had blue tits and robins. I believe there's two blue tits feeding here and they like the sunflower hearts and peanuts. A pair of robins occasionally visit to take a sunflower heart and fly off. Have seen and heard the occasional dunnock in the vicinity and know there's gold finches but they are yet to eat.

Ours is a very small garden consisting of patio and artificial grass. All of our plants and confiers are in pots.

My questions are:

would a ring pull style feeder (jacobi jayne brand) be a better option than the traditional perch types and are they suitable for blue tits and robins?

How should i go about encouraging the dunnock without introducing magpies and pigeons (who are rife in the area)

  • 17/05/2021 16:24
    Hi,
    That's great you are helping your local birdies! I'm not a professional but can make suggestions from my experience of trying to garden for wildlife.

    I only have experience of using fat balls in cages so can't comment on different feeders - my robins and blue tits are happy to eat from anything they can reach rather than specific (sometimes expensive) equipment. Sometimes I just stuff a fat ball between the branches of a shrub and that goes down well too. Blue tits and robins will also enjoy fruit, try cutting an apple or pear in half and wedging/spiking it on a plant or fence.

    Dunnocks mooch about hidden under and in hedges/bushes, they won't generally sit on a perch and eat seeds like other species. They do eat the spillage from other birds pecking at fat balls but will need cover nearby, they seem to go for the crumbs rather than the seeds here.
    I think you could try optimising your pots to target the dunnocks by providing hiding areas for them:
    1. Have a cluster as far away from doors/windows as you can with the tallest plants (trying to mimic a quiet bushy area.
    2. Try leaving a gap between a row of pots about the width of a piece of paper to create a secretive pathway birds can walk/hop through. Allow leaves to build up a little bit in the gap (i.e. don't sweep it, they search under the leaves for bugs).
    3. Put a couple of mealworms on the floor in the path between the pots or next to the front pots.
    4. See if you can have a native bush in a big pot, hawthorn has nice flowers in spring and draws in birds like a magnet and is happy to be cut back to keep it smallish.
    5. See if you can have a climber in a pot go up a fence or wall, honeysuckle smells/looks amazing and again is a bird magnet.

    To help avoid pigeons continue to avoid anything with wheat/cereal grains in it, as you have been doing. If the magpies and pigeons are around but haven't used your feeders fingers crossed your current strategy doesn't suit them as much as the other food they are currently eating elsewhere. Hanging things in the conifers is a great plan as the fatter birds may struggle to get through the branches.

    Sorry for banging on! Good luck and hopefully you will see the dunnocks regularly soon :-)