Variety has disappeared

Hi Simon
This time of the year is a quiet period for many of us with there being plenty of natural food about and the birds are moulting after the breeding season.
A lot of us never have much success with Niger seed and use Sunflower Hearts.

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It's definitely a case of the sparrows crowding out the other birds. I just went out to refill all the feeders and the sparrows flew away and afterwards there were two great tits, a blue tit and a robin as the first visitors. Eventually though the sparrows will return and eat everything!

Anyone familiar with Big Easy feeders? I have the large 6 port one and they empty it in less than 24 hours!

What food have you got out?, for the Tits you could try a feeder with Black Sunflower seeds in it, and for the Robins try a ground feeder or sprinkle something like suet pellets under any shrubs if you have any.
To stop any spillage try attaching trays to your feeder if you can.

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Afternoon simonali. We, like you, have a lot of sparrows, but they coexist with Robins, Wrens, Great, Blue, Marsh, and Crested tits, Nuthatches, Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Song thrushes, Blackbirds, Greenfinches, woodpeckers, Black redstarts...

And between the sparrows and the Red squirrels, we can see a Big Easy emptied in just a few hours, so I can see your problem.

Perhaps Alan's onto something? Different food and different feeding areas? For twelve years until we moved recently, suspended platorms under feeders, including the Big Easy, caught a lot of spillage and kept our birdlife pretty diverse. Including sparrows, of course.

We never, by the way, saw a Goldfinch on our niger seed feeder (which we left behind when we moved...).

All the best -
Dave

Agree with everything said above. Now the weather has stabilised a bit, at least in southern England there is lots of natural food and most birds have fledged.

I also had trouble with spillage and whilst you will always have some trays and good quality mixed seed will go a long way to cutting this down. Sparrows are messy eaters. I've currently got the RSPB feeders and the Gardman heave duty ones, both can have trays fitted. Worth noting that both wood pidgeons and collard doves can perch on these to feed,

I don't get the variety that Dave does (very jealous by the way) but the sparrows, goldfinches and assorted tits seem to get along fine. I have experimented a bit with where certain feeders and types of food are in relation to each other with some success.

I tend to find (and it seems to be starting earlier this year) that murmurations of starlings tend to dominate everything when they arrive. I've now put out some secondary feeders with cages to combat this. possibly try more but smaller feeders?

As with the others niger is barley touched unless nothing is on offer, sunflower hearts are eaten by most things but the goldfinches love them. You will also have less mess with hearts as opposed to seeds.

I've tried just sunflower hearts and they just get left until literally everything else is gone. I've avoided seed trays because we do get the occasional wood pigeon and they will just eat until they can barely walk, let alone fly.

I watched this morning and reckon there are around 50 sparrows in the garden and I think they all live here as they're nearly all young ones. I've read they're in decline but not in my garden!

I'll try the black sunflowers again but haven't had much success in the past and just use a seed mix.

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I mainly posted it Robbo to show Simonali that others get large numbers too, yet Hazel when she was in her old house never got them in her garden.

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In reply to Alan:

Alan. said:

I mainly posted it Robbo to show Simonali that others get large numbers too, yet Hazel when she was in her old house never got them in her garden.

Yes, that's true Alan,   I think I'd have more trouble IDing a house sparrow than a rarer bird as I've seen very few spadgers;   we didn't get Starlings either !     In our new rental place I was woken up by a Barn Owl the other morning - around 5am   lol;    I've more chance of seeing that (if I get up at Alan o'clock)  than a H.Sparrow !

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Regards, Hazel 

"Each kindness shown to birds or men is sure to flutter back again" 

Well, the inevitable has happened. We're often getting a sparrowhawk turning up in the garden in the morning. We're shooing it away but not sure if it's taking the hint.