As cold weather and terrible snow puns sweep across the UK, your garden birds need your help!
During cold snaps, birds become vulnerable and are more likely to come into our gardens to seek refuge. When temperatures drop below freezing, the insects, berries and seeds that garden birds usually feast on will become off limits thanks to frost and snow. Taking the time to provide some nutritious food and water for them is essential to their survival.
To help your birds survive, you can provide food such as meal worms, fat-balls, crushed peanuts, dried fruit, seeds and grain. Leftovers, including grated cheese, porridge oats, soft fruit, unsalted bacon, cooked rice, pasta and the insides of cooked potatoes are also good sources of energy for garden birds, and water for both drinking and bathing is vital.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The chilly conditions may also mean that you get to see some birds you don’t often see until later on in winter. They will use gardens as a safe haven. Look out for fieldfares as well as colourful species such as siskins and waxwings that will add a bit of cheer to the bleak mid-winter.
Here are six top tips for helping your garden birds:
1. Put out feed regularly, especially in severe weather. Set up a bird table and use high calorie seed mixes. This can also be used to put out kitchen scraps such as grated cheese, pastry and porridge oats.
2. Put out hanging feeders with black sunflower seeds, sunflower hearts, sunflower-rich mixes or unsalted peanuts.
3. Ensure a supply of fresh water every day. If it is very cold use tepid water but DO NOT use any antifreeze products.
4. Put out fruit, such as apples and pears, for blackbirds, song thrushes and other members of the thrush family.
5. Birdfood bars or fat hung up or rubbed into the bark of trees is a great help for treecreepers, goldcrests and many other species.
6. Put up nest boxes to provide roost sites for the smaller birds. They will then be used for breeding later in the year.When the weather conditions take a turn for the worse, you might notice that your birds start behaving differently. They will be very active first thing in the morning after a long, cold night and last thing in the afternoon as they try to build up energy to get them through another night.
During winter, birds feed often, but they have to take plenty of rest to conserve energy. Many become more sociable, flocking together to improve their chances of locating food, and huddling together during the critical night-time period to help conserve body heat.
Other birds fly to milder regions in search of areas less affected by the weather where food is still readily available. This can create a sudden and dramatic change to the birdlife in your area.
So, leave some food out for your birds and keep your eyes peeled – you might be lucky enough to spot some unusual garden visitors. Let us know who’s eating at your garden restaurant!
I too love feeding & watching the birds in my garden.
I've recently been made redundant & unsurprisingly have a bit of spare time - however I seem to spend most of the day watching the wildlife from my window. I've invested in a pair of binoculars & some bird books & have been delighted to see all the tit family, chaffinches, greenfinches, sparrows, 1 starling (just 1 - how strange) & even a cheaky white wagtail visit my garden.
My neighbours must think I'm the mad bird woman!
I'm addicted to feeding and watching the birds in our garden in Montrose. The recent wintery weather has obviously brought a lot of birds to the garden. I get lots of starlings and house sparrows, Blackbird, robin and bluetit are freqents visitors and now and again I see great tit. Increasing visits by wood pigeans and some collarred dove. The odd chaffinch and occasionally jackdaw or greenfinch. The newbee is the pied wagtail. Now, my garden has no water feature, apart from a little dish for drinking water, so I was really chuckling when my girlfriend recently texted me: THERE'S A MOORHEN IN THE GARDEN!!! :-)
It really made my day. I found it really comical because I'm always hoping for a new visitor to surprise me, but I never expected a moorhen, hahah.
All that is is interdependent.
Regarding bigger birds getting bird food. I have adapted some old plastic-covered wire hanging baskets that I don't intend to use again. Small birds can fit through the spaces between the wire, while big birds can't. You can put the hanging basket upside down either on the ground (with bird food underneath) or suspend them over some sort of tray then use the chains to hang the feeder in a tree or from a pole. You have to get the chains pulled round to the base of the hanging basket so that the basket is suspended upside down over a suitable tray. I find blue tits, great tits, coal tits, robins, starlings, long tailed tits are among the birds that will fit through the gaps. However, pheasants are strong enough to push them out of the way when the baskets are on the ground!
What an excellent idea, Jess. Well done your mum !
I'm not sure if this is any help to you but my mum had the same problem with the pigeons stealing all the food and the contraptions you can buy are really expensive so she found an old laundry basket and cut some holes in it big enough for the smaller birds then put out a dish of seed on the ground and put the upturned laundry basket over the top and pegged it in with tent pegs. Then all she did was put some food outside the basket for the pigeons and the rest inside for the smaller birds. It seems to work well and has the added advantages that it seems to keep the food drier in bad weather, birds of prey can't see the little birds under the basket and even if they do its more difficult for them to get them.