Suet Options (& Rain)?

Good morning,

Hope everyone is well? Firstly I would like to say another thank you to everyone who has been very welcoming on my first welcome post last week, very much appreciated & happy to have become part of a fab community

Following this, I’m hoping you may be able to after some advice on the following...

So currently I am using suet pellets, a mix of berry & mealworm flavours which are very popular with currently my sparrow & mass of Starlings (which some of you will know from my first post I don’t mind & actually like having, even though there messy aha), my Robin on the ground feeder & hopefully more species to come. However over the last few days we have had the first amount of rain, which has raised a few questions.

So currently I’m using a hanging dedicated mesh suet pellet feeder, which certainly does its purpose, however apart from the mess it can make, which I’m more than happy to rake up (especially from the starling), the things that has become apparent is they don’t fair too good in the rain. They become very playdoughy in the feeder and when on the floor (grass) which makes it even hard to clean up. Now although the birds still use it even in its mushy state, I’m wondering weather I should do any of the following things:

A) Keep going with the pellets, the bird still enjoy them wet & just clean it up

B) Keeping the pellets but using them in a standard plastic cylinder seed feed? I’m not sure whether birds would be able to come them from the seed wholes? And then just scatter a few on my bird table for the starlings (easier to clean)?

C) or I have seen that many people use the suet blocks instead of pellets as these can fair better in rain & cleaner? I use fat ball which some birds like but if I got the proper berry/mealworm suet blocks with a block feeder then I know the birds would still use it?

Thanks everyone Slight smile

  • Hi again Joe, I put the fat balls in 2 different types of feeders. I is the wired fat ball feeders and the other a metal one with a spring clip that has 3 grooved circles so when closed the feeder has rounded sections. I put fat cakes in the square mesh feeder and scatter suet to the blackbird and my robins. It all goes that quickly that I don't have a problem with any of the fat foods getting soggy! I will have a look and see what types of covers you can get to fix to the tops of feeders so that the contens will keep dry and attach the link here, so give me a wee while.

    I found this site but there are a few, if you type in bird feeder rain covers. There are some sites that show how to make your own. 

    https://www.whywelikethis.co.uk/best-rain-cover-bird-feeders/

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  • Thank you very much for this, very helpful indeed :)

    Also thank you for taking the time to research for me, very much appreciated & some of these look like they may be worth a further look.

    I think the key seems to be that there are so many ways of doing different things and different things work for different people, so along with everyone’s great support, I think I need to try different things & see what work best in my circumstance :)
  • I also ground feed the birds using plastic trays which are easily washed ... always have sunflower hearts & mixed seed available but only put down suet pellets when weather is dry!

     

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