RSPB Cymru is urging people to put on a festive feast to fatten up garden birds this Christmas, but to avoid leaving out the potentially dangerous leftover contents of their Christmas dinner roasting tins.
Cooked turkey fat is extremely dangerous to birds for several reasons and can have catastrophic consequences for your garden visitors.
The fat remains soft even when cooled and it could easily smear onto birds’ feathers and ruin their water-proofing and insulating qualities. This layer of grease would make it virtually impossible for birds to keep their feathers clean and dry, which is essential if they are to survive the cold winter weather.
The fat in roasting tins can quickly go rancid when leftover with other meat juices in a warm kitchen before being put outside. This forms an ideal breeding ground for salmonella and other food poisoning bacteria, which could prove fatal to birds at this time of the year.
It is a popular tradition to add other ingredients to a joint of meat before roasting, including rubbing salts in order to crisp the skin and to add extra flavour. High levels of salt are toxic to garden birds so RSPB Cymru urges people not to leave the cooked fats from any meat on bird tables this Christmas.
To read more about this story go to www.rspb.org.uk/wales These hints and tips will help encourage visitors to your garden in time for the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch. Join around half-a-million other people on 24-25th January taking a closer look at the wildlife on their doorstep, over seven million birds were counted in last year’s Birdwatch alone. To get involved simple pick an hour over the weekend and tell us what you see. For more information about how you can give nature a home in your outside space visit – rspb.org.uk/homes