Attracting Birds to our Back yard.

Hi Francis,

All of us have different types of gardens, big, small, medium and some are the same as you with a backyard.  It doesn't necessarily mean you are doing anything wrong, but simply the birds in your area aren't aware of what food you have on offer. It takes a little while for them to get use to feeders at the best of times so it's just a matter of having patience.  Some people see the benefits after a couple of days and others it takes a few weeks, it all depends on the area within which you live and what type of food you are putting out.  There are all sorts of different seed you can buy, you could go with one type of food for those birds you know are in the area or you can go with mixed seed which cater for all sorts.  The general rule of thumb on here in my opinion is sunflower hearts/chips, black sunflower seed, peanut granules, peanuts in a peanut feeder, millet seed, suet pellets, fat balls, fruit i.e sultanas, raisins and grapes and of course mealworms (mealworms particularly at this time of year to help the chicks) and of course, bird bath and/or water bowls.

Hope this helps, I'm sure you will get lots of good advice from many on here as to the best way forward.

Cant realy add to what Kezmo has already.

I live in a ground floor flat too  and can never get birds to come to feeders here .

But we do have some amasing visitors in the back here . So far we get Oystercatchers digging for worms  Herring gulls (they like to attack the dogs) lol and in the tenement across from us it looks like 2 pair of swifts have set up home. They are amasing and beautiful birds.

Im lucky in one way that I do have a small garden plot at the bottom of the hill where we have build a small wildlife garden and we get plenty of birds the feeders there and also plenty tadpoles in the pond ,which is fantastic cause its only just a year old.

Sorry to ramble on a bit.

Cheers

AL

Hi Kezmo

Thanks for that I'll try that. We see Blackbirds around a lot and Robins. perhaps like you say I'll start with a mixed seed and see what happens.

Cheers

Francis.

Hi again Francis, if you have blackbirds and robins, then they will most definitely prefer to eat from the ground or from an open hanging mesh feeder - something that they can land on as opposed to something with perches albeit it is not unheard of for robins to adapt quite well to seed feeders.  Again I hope this help you. :-)

I can only reiterate what has already been said, but can add that water is also a good way to attract birds so a bird bath could help.  

Sarah

Hi Bolton blackbirds,

As has been said it is a matter of patients but no matter how small ur garden birds will come, there even people that live in multy story flatts that attract birds by window feeders. I would go for suet treets (balls, cakes and so on) sunflower hearts and some ground feeding mixes like the rspb stuff and of cours some water.

My mothers garden litterlally took months before birds started to visit but they arrived lol.

Good luck!!!!!!!!

Just to add to the advice already given - birds like to have cover nearby to fly to if they feel nervous of possible predators, I only have  a back yard but have filled it with plants and shrubs in large containers. I even have trees in massive containers. Some of the stuff is evergreen so there are places to hide and roost in even in Winter.

I now have loads of birds visiting. Hope this helps.

CJ