Chiltern Birder

It looks as if the starlings don't like my brand of fat bar. After having at least 17 going through half a bar in one session it has only gone down by about another quarter. If the starlings had stayed in those numbers I would have expected to have replaced it inside 48 hours. Judging by the number of juveniles in the garden both blue and great tits have produced good broods. Now that the sunflower seeds have run out I am seeing no more finches but still have robins, blackbirds and wood pigeons.

We seem to have at least one brood of blue tits with a group of juveniles regularly on the feeders. The lack of young starlings is quite startling, I still have several fat bars in the box while normally I would have expected to have had to restock. On the other hand the finches have cleaned me out of sunflower seeds. We haven't been totally deserted, a couple of times today a solitary starling has come to the peanut butter feeder . This is curious as he finds it difficult to perch on it and it is mounted on the same pole as a purpose made starling feeder containing a fat bar. Do any of these birds ever read the catalogues? Since posting the above our visitor to the peanut butter feeder must have told the family as around 17 juveniles suddenly descended on the garden.I had forgotten just how much noise they made. It isn't quite as bad now as we are down to 8 or 9 in the garden at any one time.