New to feeding garden birds - (Peanuts or Nijer Seed)

Hello Marian, thank you & very nice to meet you :)

Thank you very much, I’m really enjoying watching the station get busy and I look forward to attracting more species.

Thank you too for your advice on the Niger seed, it’s not the first time I have read people stop using it, so appreciate the direct answer, which means in that case I will not worry about getting them and I’ll stick with the peanuts.

Trouble is I’m bit excited, which is making me impatient, particularly after seeing the Robins & that one Blue tit. So I just need to give it more time, as it’s only been a couple of weeks aha :) But hopefully in a few weeks more bird will start to arrive. It fascinating thought how birds do arrive that you have never seen before :)

Hi Joe, and welcome. I'd echo not using nyger seed, the sunflower hearts will suffice, but also I wouldn't have the peanuts either, as in my garden nothing touched them. I would get a bird bath or two though, if you haven't already... smashing photo opportunities of bathing birds!

Hello Joe welcome to the community from up in Caithness at the very top of Scotland. Well I am going to upset the apple cart! Apart from feeding as you are, seed, suet, sunflower hearts, fat balls and cakes, I also feed peanuts (whole) and Niger seed. The Niger seed and sunflower hearts are on the same hanger. I filled up with 2 with 3 fat balls each, 1 x Niger seed, 1 x sunflower hearts, 2 x seed, 4 x peanuts day before yesterday and today apart from the peanuts which are all half empty and an odd fat a ball, everything is gone. The usual visitors were about, Robin, blackbird, blue and great tit, dunnock, sparrow, chaffinch, goldfinch, and not forgetting the school bullies as I call them, the starlings! We also have a family of pheasants, and they love the bird seed and whole peanuts and only eat their corn once the rest on the ground has been eaten! had for the first time today, a new garden tick for me, a pair of black caps. I thought I was seeing one the other day on its own but both appeared today. So for me the Niger seed and sunflower hearts are as popular as the rest of the goodies. Something that we make is our own pastry, very simple, shops own brand flour and fat, half fat to flour, add to that chopped nuts, seed, suet, grated cheese, sultanas, grated apple anything that you would give them normally, add a splash of water and put in a polly bag in the fridge for a few hours. You then have tasty pastry to mould into shape and put into feeders or you can make your own, or fill coconut shells, you can pull of small pieces and squeeze round branches in the trees and bushes. Beware though they love this so you may need to keep making it!!

If you type in the top search bar, Pastry shop open now, you will see a great link with cracking photos, which will give you ideas. Good luck

Hello & thank you, it’s a pleasure to have joined :)

Wow you certainly have a lot of visitors haha, very jealous! It’s so amazing to see how different things work for different people, based on location & many other factors. But I suppose that just makes things more fun and interesting to see what works & what doesn't in each of our gardens :)

For me at the mo, it’s the suet pellets, fat balls, mealworms & sunflower hearts that are popular, but at the mo it’s just regular sparrows, starlings & my new resident Robins which I love :)
But as it seems hopefully, the likes of the blue tit I saw on Monday will start heading back & bring friends with him, who then hopefully will make use of the peanuts & mix seed.

Your homade pastry treats also sounds amazing, and as a cooking fanatic myself, I will definitely take a look at you page & give that ago.

Thanks again for the hints, tips & advice, all very much appreciated :)

Well if you are making pastry for that delicious meal you are having, just make sure you use the correct batch!! :)

It can often take a long time for finches or other birds to find the Nyjer seed feeder. I opted for a cheap very small prefilled Nyjer seed feeder like this so I wouldn't waste money:
www.reallywildbirdfood.co.uk/.../std-1
It still took a month before any birds found it but now I get a couple of goldfinches regularly visiting.

It could be helpful to put the feeder in a more sheltered spot like in a tree, to encourage the birds to feel safe and check it out. You could try that with the peanut feeder as well. And only put a tiny bit of peanuts out as well (like 3-4 peanuts) so they don't get wet and unappetising.

Hello,

Thank you very much for these tips, very much appreciated :)

I’m giving my peanuts a bit more time a think, but your tip about only putting a few to begin with is a sensible idea :)

Thankfully my whole feeding station is in a good place of natural shade/sheltered spot in the garden (shadier in the winter & bit more sun to it in the spring/summer), but the good thing is it’s right next to a large tree/bush type thing & a small pot tree, both of which have already done their purpose of acting as safety shelter for the smaller birds :)

I tried nyger about 5 years for the first time in the winter and the nyger seed was in my garden for 5-6 weeks and not 1 bird of any type appeared on my bird-feeders. It was so disappointing  and I had to throw all of the nyger seed away. As soon as I bought sunflower hearts the Goldfinches within about 2 days never stopped taken the sunflower hearts. I can remember when I first became interested birdwatching in the late 1950’s as a 5 year old, and you never saw a Goldfinch anywhere in your Garden and it was years until I saw my first ever Goldfinch in a woodland well known in Northumberland. Goldfinches where quite rare in my youth and Goldfinches where mainly a woodland bird and there wasn’t the massive choice that there is now for feeding wild birds and with more and more people feeding birds in there gardens, Gold Finches over the years started been attracted to garden, both urban and rural areas. I was about the only person in my street that fed wild birds in the 1950’s. Of. course you could buy peanuts everywhere. But it wasn’t easy finding many other types of bird-food. You could order items from the RSPB. But there where no RSPB shops on reserves at that time, as there are at some reserve now and of course with no online shop as there wasn’t any internet at that time, as the internet was still decades away. The only way to buy items from the RSPB was by ordering items from the RSPB catalogue that came with the RSPB magazine which at that time was published for RSPB member 6 times a times a year when I first joined the RSPB and the only way that you pay for any time that you ordered from the RSPB catalogue was by sending either a cheque or postal order by Royal Mail to the RSPB with your order as there where no credit or debit cards of course for another few decades and the choice of bird food and bird-feeders and even when buying from the RSPB catalogue the choice wasn’t very big at that time. How times have changed for the better in the huge amount of different types of bird food, bird seed and as well as nuts such as peanuts for wild birds.