THE FEEDING POST

The wee garden birds and the not so wee ones, have not been visiting my garden bird feeders in any number and I have been puzzling about this. Could it be, I wondered, the change of feed. The local shops were out of packets of seed as so many people were putting out food. So, in the depths of the Arctic blast we had, I went to a local farm shop and bought about 20 kilos of their ordinary bird seed mix. Could the seed really have been totally different...surely, bird seed is what it is. The peanut house, which holds a kilo of nuts was not going down very fast either. I had not changed my nut supplier.

Perhaps the birds were well supplied with the thoughtfulness of all the other people feeding them and they did not need my offerings. I continued to wait and watch. The other morning, I believe I was presented with the true and not so palatable answer. As I gazed through the window a sparrow hawk flew close by; close enough for me to see a small bird being carried in its claws.

MIXING UP THE BIRD FEEDERS

I asked hubby to put the bird feeders away a couple of months ago, not a good idea, as I did not know where to find them. But, the up side of it was, that hubby had to go out in the ice and snow yesterday to retrieve the feeders for me.

Having filled the peanut feeder 'house' which holds an awful lot of peanuts, I gaily poured in mixed seeds to the remaining small feeders I had been given, which were....wide meshed peanut ones. What a mess, seeds everywhere except in a feeder!  Fortunately, I have a plastic tub into which I could sweep most of the misplaced varieties of seeds. There is no doubt I was distracted, dealing with unpacking food, travel bags and sorting out the washing. No chance of any of the washing going out on the line to dry in all that ice and snow and more snow.

The down side of the exercise was, I had to trudge outside in the ice and snow to find hubby so I could get the appropriate bird feeding containers. We'll have to fix up a two-way communication system. Calling never works.

The birds found the bird food today and we have seen crows waiting to shake the feeders to get seed onto the surface of the snow. Lots of little feathered visitors arrived too. Some birds are so small, sparrows and robins, for example, you wonder if they would survive a long hard Winter. Temperatures were below -17Celcius last night and it's only November.

INVESTIGATING BIRD FEEDERS

We investigated the bird feeders this morning. I can almost hear you ask, "Investigate bird feeders?".  It's not that we want all the feathered friends in the neighbourhood to flock to our garden, share and share alike, I say.

It seemed curious that the lovely new peanut house didn't seem to attract bird life, the four perch seed feeder seemed a forlorn perching place, and the fat balls just weren't disappearing. That is until today.  I saw a bunch of blackbirds or perhaps they were crows, nibbling at the minute bits of fat balls left in the almost empty nets.

In between heavy snow falls, we decided it was time to put out some more fat balls and refill the seed feeder. On checking the seed feeder with a smaller one, we discovered that the access to the seeds in the four perch feeder was restricted, meaning therefore, that the birds could not get to the larger seeds in the mix. They had piled up at the bottom of the feeder, and were going nowhere. Those seeds were shaken out on top of the new snow. For now, the small seed feeder with a single perch, (but two nibbling access points) is out while the other one is cleaned and dries off. We shall probably modify it.

This afternoon The birds are back, doing their gripping little perch dances, and exploring the food stores that we have left out for them.