My morning

Apparently all baby birds should be fed on insects so DH announced yesterday that he's not putting out any more feed until the sparrows etc clear the blackfly from our mock orange thing. They've cleaned the roses of greenfly very nicely but obviously black fly isn't as tasty. They've done a good job in previous years. Definelty no peanuts and the pigeons are sulking.

Oh I shouldn't have looked at this thread while I can't sleep. I feel very sad now as well.

Oh I'm really glad about that now we have bought a b****y great bagful of the stuff!?. We do get them around the garden - they just don't come down. They will sit on the tv ariel and twitter away. Probably saying "when is she going to get some sunflower seeds?"

We have four goldfinches who take turns very politely on the niger seeds. Never had any until I started putting those seeds in a feeder. They will eat sunflower hearts if they can but the parakeets usually beat them to it.
I read that peanuts are bad for birds in the spring as fledglings can choke on them, so I tried whole sunflower seeds instead. The lovely but greedy parakeets can empty that in an hour and the mess of seed husks underneath is appalling.
Has anyone any suggestions on a better peanut substitute?

DH also hates magpies. They know when he is getting out of his chair to rush over to the window to chase them away and before he gets there they flap of into the bushes. I hate these predator birds. I once saw a jay catch a sparrow in mid air.

SGreyduster - apparently goldfinches have gone off Niger seed and moved on to sunflower hearts! Certainly nothing touches the Niger seed in our feeders. It's the fat balls that are really popular at the moment for all our birds. (Except the pesky pigeons)

Magpies like to eat eggs of other birds, particularly blackbirds.

Nasty black and white things and not even melodic!

Wish I had great fat breasts!!?

It us upsetting but we should not really interfere with this.
Some time ago we watched a Sparrow Hawk demolishing a wood pigeon. A pile of feathers is all you get left. Sparrow hawks are beautiful efficient killing machine.

However we still have far too many big fat pigeons. I have to angle the feeders so that pigeons cannot get to the seed feeders because of their great fat breasts.

It makes me doubt if there is a God the way we eat meat and can't the animals be vegetarian?

A wren, of course

I cannot watch wildlife programs. The other day, I was peering into a nest box in my garden as no one had used it last year. Out shot a tiny bird, which I think was a week and made me jump!

I must have been a hardened toddler. Looking out of granny's window, I saw a cat dash past with a chick in its jaws. DM tried to shield my eyes, but I am reputed to have exclaimed, 'Let him chew it!' I think I developed some sensitivity as an adult.

It is truly grim isn't it - when I hear people extolling the beauties of nature, part of me agrees and part of me wants to point out that it is predicated on survival of the fittest and that can be very cruel indeed.

I once walked along a lane with my DD (about 4, I would think) and we were enjoying the sight of a wee bird hopping along the verge by us, when a cat darted out of the bushes and in a flash made dinner of it. A bit of a harsh lesson for my little one.

Maybe I could cover the patio with wire netting or something to keep the birds of prey away from my babies. Or something! Or just sit there with a gun in my hand.
After watching the great tits carefully building the nest and feeding the babies it was such a shock. It all happened so quickly.

One morning I was sitting having a cuppa at my kitchen table, watching the little birds, sparrows, great tits, blue tits and chaffinches feeding on the bird table. Suddenly, there was a commotion and most of them flew away. Down swooped a sparrow hawk and grabbed one of the remaining great tits. I was shocked, not so much at the catch, but seeing a sparrow hawk so close to the house!

They absolutely love dried meal worms. Buyology sell them for £4.99 a kilo.
Haven't seen them cheaper.

I wish we did get more garden birds, Nfk. We have a bird bath, bird feeders, and regularly put out apples, fruit cake and other goodies on the lawn, but only seem to get sparrows (which I do love), pigeons, magpies and blackbirds on a regular basis. We get very excited if, like the other day, we have a great tit (first one for nearly six years), or a goldfinch of which there are lots around but in spite of putting out niger seed, they don't come down into the garden. . We couldn't move for birds of all kinds in our last garden.

Has anyone else noticed a rise in garden birds feeding and nesting in their gardens this spring? We've put it down to the drought in this area as we have a pond with a small waterfall.

On my feeder the crows are the only corvids intelligent enough to pull up the filled coconut halves by the string and anchor it with their feet while they feed. The others dangle upside down and aren't always successful. My bird feeder has been very busy recently. A whole jar of Flutter Butter gets emptied in one day, by starlings and tits.

Magpies are the worst, I think. When we lived in a town I once saw a group of them swooping down on a cat. So Shysal I wouldn't worry, your cat was probably being brave.
We have some newly hatched chickens, in a small run covered by mesh, and a buzzard is regularly swooping down to see if he can get one.

We have a sparrowhawk calling in regularly ( sometimes gets a small bird, sometimes doesn't). And red kites patrol for unwary pigeons.A pigeon nest was pulled to bits a few weks ago and everything in it was despatched....only found the dead parents lying in the garden, feathers everywhere.Rooks or magpies or jackdaws, who knows?
Nature yes, but unpleasant to see.

Don't kites generally live mostly on carrion? Something to do with their talons being weak.

The crows fly very high to attack the red kite that regularly fly over here. They make a terrific noise.

We have occasional visits from a sparrowhawk after the large sparrow colony in our hedge. It's a thick dense mixed hedge so a successful attack is fairly rare. It really is a case of the quick or the dead. We also have magpies nesting in our pine tree but they rarely succeed in attacking 'our' birds as there's plenty of cover in our garden. Our feeders are also next to bushes so birds aren't in the open and vulnerable when feeding. It helps.