My Aunty Joyce is forever linked with goldcrests in my mind now. On Monday I joined relatives to bid her farewell at Birmingham's Robin Hood Cemetery. Afterwards we gathered in a nearby hotel and there in the late October sunshine, two of these gorgeous little birds played hide-and-seek in the top of a conifer. It's a nice way to remember someone.
Back at work my thoughts are turning to our annual Feed the Birds events, coming up the weekend after next (24 & 25 Oct). It's a time when we all start to feel the impact of winter as the clocks go back an hour, making the morning's rather dark! I've already invested in new batteries for my bike lights in preparation.
Birds have a pretty high body temperature and if they don't get enough food to eat each day to keep warm overnight, you won't be hearing them come the dawn chorus. Lots of people aren't sure about what food they can put out for birds. Basically avoid salty stuff and too much bread. Always try to provide water, prefaerably poured fresh into a clean bird bath on a daily basis. Never put out more than the birds will easily eat in a day, otherwise you could attract unwanted wildlife.
What's always best .. is to provide food naturally. Nature's larder has been left somewhat bare thanks to our overly zealous tidying of gardens and open spaces. There simply aren't as many berries, seeds and nuts around as there used to be. Imprortantly, insect numbers are also down and many birds rely on the high protein they can get from bugs, slugs and worms. So you'll need to embrace them too. There are ways of doing this without hugging a slimey snail or tucking a moth up in a nice wooly blanket in your bedroom drawers. Bug hotels, or wildlife stacks, are easy to create and you can use garden and household scraps instead of sending them to landfill.
When we get cold, we can light a fire, pull on a thicker coat or switch on a heater. Birds don't have that luxury. They may, in some cases, huddle together. I favour that approach when cold. Birds may nest alongside warm chimneys, in thick bushes away from the wind or undercover in old buildings. But the only thing they can really do to keep warm, is eat.