Overrun by Great Tits!

At the moment lots of birds will be off 'skulking' in post nesting feather change and hopefully feeding up on natural food - they should have dispersed out into the wider environment. Your Great Tits have obviously had a good season and as you say are dominating an easy food source. As much as you enjoy watching them it might be an idea to give feeding a break while there are insects about - keep providing water and return to feeding come late autumn/ early winter depending on the weather

Thank you Germain - good advice. I put out a bit of food in the morning and evening so its probably a bit much.

I'll reduce to every second day for a week and then further reduce until late September(?).

Thank you Mike.

I may have actually overcompensated recently - leading up the heatwave and during the 2 hottest days I put out plenty of food and water/ice blocks ensuring the birds didnt have to exert themselves too much and ready for conditions they would have never experienced before.

Prior to this I was putting out some food in the morning and evening over last few months, which as Cin mentions isnt necessary at this time of year.

I'm slowly reducing the feeding and now only putting food out every morning and next week I'll reduce that too.

(I'm probably being too cautious here and spoiling them still?!?!!!!)

(this is a great learning experience for me!)

Westcott said:

Thank you Mike.

I may have actually overcompensated recently - leading up the heatwave and during the 2 hottest days I put out plenty of food and water/ice blocks ensuring the birds didnt have to exert themselves too much and ready for conditions they would have never experienced before.

Prior to this I was putting out some food in the morning and evening over last few months, which as Cin mentions isnt necessary at this time of year.

I'm slowly reducing the feeding and now only putting food out every morning and next week I'll reduce that too.

(I'm probably being too cautious here and spoiling them still?!?!!!!)

(this is a great learning experience for me!)

You're welcome.

My apologies for the delayed response, I've had a few issues here with my battered old body.

Moving on, and in a more positive fashion (my preferred style), it is easy to become over cautious and with all the media hype we see around declining species, climate change, global warming etc, its nice to  come across well meaning people who try what they can to avert catastrophe.

More importantly, you're happy to learn and progress forward, and you will reach the happy medium.

One little thing to share with you, until an incident a few years ago, I used to do a lot of mountaineering and wild camping, both very responsibly. In my quest to be able to be in many environments as safely as possible, I did a survival course a few decades bak run by a nearby TA unit.

It was very interesting and answered so many silly questions, that really were not silly.  Anyway, we're all very aware of the need to stay hydrated, and that was nothing new to me even back then. But, what was very interesting, was proper hydration, not just taking cold or hot drinks, but which and when.

We all love that cold beer on a hot summers day, or a nice cold glass of squash with ice, and boy, it does feel good at the time.

But!

How often have you suddenly felt hot soon after drinking that nice cold drink?

The advice then (and as far as I'm aware still is) was not to drink cold drinks, but hot drinks.

Why?

Because you body is a unique complex biological engineering masterpiece that works hard to maintain the necessary equilibrium for you to perform your daily tasks. To drink cold drinks is like giving your inner body a sudden cold shock, so what it does in response is increase the blood flow to rapidly warm you up!

The consequence, you get hot!

All living creatures will have the same biological set up, and what I'm saying is for the birds, just place water out, no ice, because they want to keep as cool as they can.

Stick with us, we're a bit crazy at times, but like you, we want the best for nature and there will often be someone that can help you enjoy watching and feeding the birds, and please feel free to share your stories and any photos.