Feed Them And They Will Come – A Return

When I started blogging for RSPB Cymru I used to live in a house with an incredible garden. It was only when I started reading the various bird watching magazines that I realised how lucky I was to have such a huge variety of wildlife visiting it. My Big Garden Birdwatch counts for both the BTO and RSPB used to easily contain 20 – 25 species, some weeks I could top 30 species of bird visiting the feeders. Add to the bird life a healthy hedgehog population, the occasional fox, at least two species of bat and more bees and butterflies than you could shake a flower at!

But those days are long gone now. We had to move out of that house as the landlord wanted to move back in. It was a sad day, but in the interim period I have seen so much more wildlife visiting various nature reserves and walking around the farmland of my new home. I have moved back to my old hometown of Tonyrefail. From a garden that backs onto woodland, I am now in the middle of a busy main road in a vibrant town.

I have been living here for about two years now, and I have had feeders out in the garden for most of that time. Other than the snowy winter of 2013, I have failed to attract much into the garden. I have seen the occasional Wren, we had a resident Dunnock for a while, there are House Sparrows around, but nothing would venture on to the feeders. All I could guarantee was a flock of noisy Jackdaws that would clear up any scraps of bread I would put out. Now I don’t mind a Jackdaw, a supremely intelligent bird, and it has the most wonderful sapphire eye, but like most people I do long for the odd Robin to be honest.

All of this changed back in the spring, and it weirdly coincided with the new series of Springwatch starting. I had noted that the House Sparrows were searching the rose bush outside the patio doors for aphids to take back to their fledglings, something that they had done before the previous year. I knew where they had nested the last spring, which is not a million miles from my back garden. So half a dozen or so individuals would turn up for a few weeks, and then that was it. If I saw them again it was a red letter day. I decided I would give putting food out another go, and I bought some dried meal worms, and sprinkled them below the rose bush. I had brown stone below the bush, so the Jackdaw’s didn’t find this cache of food for quite some time. In this time the House Sparrows were able to get used to supplementing all the Rose Sawfly caterpillars and aphids on the bush, with some of my food. I tried putting a feeder filled with shelled sunflower hearts out for them. To my delight they started using it. What were six or seven individuals was now about a dozen. As the weeks rolled by they started bringing their fledglings into the garden to feast on this bountiful supply of food. Sunflower hearts have the added advantage that Jackdaws don’t seem to eat them. I only discovered this when I started making some sunflower seed mix with fat sticks and the Jackdaws always left the sunflower hearts.

Word was clearly getting about now as the garden had its own little flock of Goldfinches. Collared Doves were coming in and feeding from the spillages, and then we had a little bit of magic. For a few fleeting weeks we had a stunning male Bullfinch drop by. I have no idea where he came from, or where he went, but I did manage to film him!

A few Chaffinches had cottoned on to the new fine eatery in town, and they started to arrive and call “chink-chink-chink” from the fence, alerting Dawn to get the washing in, as their call is said to foretell rain. Something that did actually prove accurate on one occasion! We did get a Chiffchaff fly in on one day. Blue Tits and Great Tits chose the feeders to ferry food to their nests, one Blue Tit has remained resident.

The sparrow numbers were now starting to border on the bonkers. In a few short months I went from less than half a dozen to maxima (so far!) of forty two birds in the garden! There cannot be a House Sparrow south of High Street I am not feeding! It is clearly Collared Dove season at the moment, as I had a garden record of seven birds in the garden last weekend. The Jackdaws are not sure what to make of it all!

It has been a remarkable turnaround for this semi urban garden. It just goes to prove that with a little bit of study of the bird’s habits and a lot of patience, if you feed them, they do indeed come!

All Images & video taken in my back garden in Tonyrefail -  © Anthony Walton

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