It may have been an early start this morning, but watching the birds in my garden and sipping tea with Radio Norfolk’s Wally Webb isn’t exactly hard work and we had a lot of fun telling the Radio Norfolk listeners how they can help their feathered friends on Feed The Birds Day and into the winter months.
Wally and his BBC Radio Norfolk car parked up outside the house just before 8am and the birds were, well, fairly sparse to be honest. With a solitary goldfinch resting on our feeder and a few starlings, gulls and wood pigeons flying over head it was hardly a bird bonanza! However, with a fantastic summer behind us where finches, thrushes, tits butterflies and insects filled the garden, there was still plenty to talk about.
As our evenings get darker and the air gets crisper, natural food will become more and more scarce for our garden birds. This weekend is Feed the Birds Day and it couldn’t be a more important time of year to be filling up your bird feeders and keeping the water topped up in your bird baths. As our grounds get covered with frost and the berries on the trees slowly disappear, sunflower seeds, nijer seeds, fat balls and grated cheese (yes, birds love grated cheese!) will all be gobbled up and very gratefully received.
If you have ten minutes this weekend, top up your bird feeders, grab a cuppa and a biscuit and sit back and delight in watching your garden birds. It may be a busy weekend with Halloween, shopping, kids running around and other weekend chores, but making time to help out the birds in your garden will offer a little slice of tranquil wildlife watching amidst the possible chaos!
It was a good morning, just a shame the birds only appeared in the garden after Wally had gone. I think they were waiting for him to go. It was a very pretty sight later in the morning.