Been over to Fairburn Ings as usual this morning and found the feeders empty again. Apparently last Wednesday they were going to be cleaned, but since then have been topped up once. Shame as I had a Sparrowhawk at Pickup recently, which can be a regular visitor when the feeders are topped up regularly. I always get the same response "Someone will be doing them" or "Nobody is in to do them" But with 7 members of staff, even if there are no volunteers available, then surely its not too hard for one the staff to top them up. All the more galling when you see two large awnings up advertising birdfood "Tried and trusted", but not at Fairburn. Oh well, lets hope Alan remembers tomorrow.
Hi Phil, thanks for your concern about this. As I'm sure you're aware, Greenfinch Disease can easily be passed between birds through unhygienic feeding areas so we make it a priority to clean them on a monthly basis to keep this at bay.
To make sure any potential contamination is gotten rid of, we can't put old seed back into freshly-cleaned feeders, so try to run it down as much as possible before cleaning feeders to reduce seed wastage.
As of this week we're trying a new strategy where we'll rotate the cleaning of each feeder area so that only one area is being run-down at a time, meaning there are plenty of other fuller feeders for birds to use on the reserve.
Hope that helps answer your query. If you want to discuss it further, please feel free to come and chat to me in the visitor centre about it. Thanks!