I have a small feeding station set up in a quite small garden. But locally we have some very large trees with great, blue, coal and long tails tits, sparrows and sometimes goldfinches. I tried everything to attach them and found a small tray with slightly crushed peanuts works. For most, long tails tits are ignoring me. Is this normal, they have a perfectly good peanut feeder to feed from but chose to eat from a the tray.
But this then attracts the pigeons and squirrels, sometimes a flock of asbo magpies.
Also. Does anyone know who to attract blue tits into your bird box?
Picture attached for clarity
Hi Josh, with the blue tits. it may be that there isn't enough cover for them to feel safe to eat, as in our garden they'll take a single sunflower heart from the feeder, then fly into a nearby leafy tree to eat. Eating from the tray is probably easier than from a feeder, using less energy, hence why more of the trayed up food is going. The other birds may have established feeding routes so until the weather gets really poor they may stick to that. Also, if your set up is relatively new, patience is key. In our last place it was 6-8 weeks before we had regular feeding birds. We found the long tailed tits like suet nuggets.
Thank you. The blue will fly to the bush in the corner of the garden. Me and suet don't get on I've had suet blocks, balls, pellets both mealworm and berry. The only bird to ever eat anything was a random starling one day but never again. Thank you for your advice, my feeder has been up a few months now
Coal tits and a pair of great tits are regular visitors, the blue tit comes ever other day, it would be good to get more birds as they fly over all the time. Someone else garden treats must taste better then mine
If you're not getting many birds in, it's probably worth only half filling your feeders... especially with the wet weather at hand, as the seed etc will rot. And when the icy weather hits, don't forget to break the ice on the water for them