A year ago it was a very different story……..birds!

Your patience has been rewarded.
Wish I could sit in your garden and watch them !

You have a great variety, lovely to see wagtails. My suburban garden has wood pigeons and magpies, along with my resident Robin and a few sparrows. At one time I had most of the species that you have named. I was a bit worried about urban rats and although I’ve never seen one just hearing about them put me off using the bird feeder. Maybe I’ll try again and sit out in the garden then clean the bird table if there’s anything left.

Experience tells us we would get rats, so no feeders, but entertaining flocks of startlings pecking at the grass after rain.

My next door neighbour puts fat balls on her back garden path. Guess what she is feeding? Nothing in our garden for her rats to eat, thank goodness, and nowhere, such as decking, rubbish etc. for them to hide in. I've never seen one and my dogs don't seem to smell them, but I have poison bait boxes down anyway. I can't understand people risking attracting rats like this.

Yes I stopped feeding the birds because of rats

We previously lived in a village where I had a bird table for most of our 30 years there. Although we had rats in our very large 3 tines, there was never any evidence that they went anywhere near the bird table

Our main predator was suirrels and they defied every device we put up to keep them away. Watching their acrobatics as they got round our defences was an amusement in itself.

We now live in a town centre. A big open churchyard opposite otherwise all tarmac and cement. We do not see many birds. I have yet to put my bird feeders up. My main worry is seagulls. We are 90 miles from the sea, but the gulls come into the town when there are stormy conditions.

Despite living in close proximity to fields and woods, we get very few “exotic” garden birds, apart from goldfinches when the cornflowers have gone to seed. I can hear greenfinches and chaffinches but never see them. We do have robins, occasional tits, and lots of sparrows, and it’s a great joy to see new broods of youngsters doing zoomies around the garden, L plates on, finding their feet.

DD and SiL put feeders up in their garden for the first time this year and she is always dangling her avian visitors in front of my nose! “Oh, did I tell you we had a lesser spotted woodpecker/blackcap/greenfinch, Mum?” Oddly enough they never seem to get sparrows. Perhaps she’d like a few of mine😂! I’m delighted for them. There’s nothing more calming than watching birds, whether you’re in your garden or in a hide at sunrise on a glorious Norfolk reed bed.

Just when you got your wish, the RSPB have asked us to limit our feeding as disease is spread via their saliva!
www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/news/how-to-help-garden-birds

I clean my feeders regularly, but it’s the bird bath that worries me. I fill it up every morning and again during the day if it’s empty but the filth the pigeons and bigger birds leave behind is appalling and this is daily. Birds have to not only bathe in, but drink from this. Tell me that this is not a far bigger concern than feeders. You can only do so much.

My garden is swarming with birds this year. The dunnocks and blackbirds are doing spectacularly well.
I don’t feed the birds, but I have a lot of cover for them and water always available, so I have a resident population of a variety of common species, with occasional forays from a sparrow hawk.

I think the good weather last summer enabled the birds to raise several broods, so we’re seeing increased numbers this year.

My garden is also highway for hedgehogs travelling between neighbouring gardens, where they are (over)fed & filmed. They are a big success story in this little village.

How lovely. Bit under the weather yesterday so early night. We’re on 4th floor with floor to ceiling windows. The variety of birds I watched flying past was fabulous, including swifts and a couple of buzzards.
Would put out feeders on the terrace but with 3 cats, probably not a good idea!

So far no rats here (fingers crossed) but a squirrel has taken up residence underneath it and clears any rubbish away very diligently.

I too have a big variety of birds visiting the feeder every day - great isn't it? My favourite is the great spotted woodpecker.

The merlin app on my phone tells me that there are so many species singing away around the garden.

Just to say that the RSPB says feeding should be as follows:

1 May to 31 October
Pause filling your bird feeders with seeds or peanuts.
You can continue to offer small amounts of mealworms, fatballs or suet.

1 November to 30 April
You can feed your birds a full range of bird foods, including seeds and peanuts.

For anyone with a busy bird table, you should film it for Window Swap.
www.window-swap.com/

Such a lovely website, your birds would be wonderful on there. I think you film from your window for exactly 10 minutes, including the window frame, and submit it.

Google 'how to film for window swap' for the details. Let us know if you do!

Thanks Chestnut.

We have an old cherry tree which makes a good place to hang bird feeders. We use suet balls, seed and suet slabs. We have woodpeckers, tits, sparrows, robins, blackbirds, crows, and pigeons in the ground hoovering up any spillages. We also have seagulls but they don’t come near the bird feeders. We’ve not had any rats but we do get the odd visiting badger, squirrels, small mice.

I was cheered this morning by seeing two goldfinches in the garden. We haven’t had them before.

The gardens in our street have all been visited by rats in the last couple of weeks, so we owners have all agreed to stop putting out bird food.

I have bird feeders hung on an unused washing line. The smaller garden birds use them & drop food on the ground. This is cleared regularly during the day by Starlings, Blackbirds & Thrushes. A bit away from them my flock of pigeons sit on my roof or wander & lie on the grass most of the day. They feed on the path & hoover up everything given to them. In the evening there are around 5-10 who clean up anything the small birds have dropped that the main flock of pigeons may have missed. I tried not putting seeds out in the feeders but every time what I put out was ignored & the little ones surprised me by shouting at me every time I went to the garden! I guess they all have minds of their own & did not agree with RSPB.

Should also have said that in nearly 3 years have seen no sign of rats. Think the pigeons would object to anything else clearing up for them 😂

There is a monthly fee for WindowSwap

Google AI say it is entirely free to submit your window to Window Swap. The founders created the platform as a community project to share views and connect globally, so there are no fees required to add your own clip to their archive.

I don't put food out for the birds though my late mum did and spent hours watching them from her chair by the window.
I recently had a family of foxes in my overgrown garden. There were four cubs and it was lovely watching them playing rough and tumble in the long grass and occasionaly coming close to the house, although the mother kept her distance. I started putting food out for them but never saw them actually eat it as it was close to the house though I did see a cub sniffing the empty bowl. Then since the hot weather there has been no sign of them at all. The last time I put food out it was birds pecking at it so I stopped.

Since posting the above I have seen mummy fox sunning herself but no cubs! Hopefully they will be there again soon. I miss their frolicking!