Chiltern Birder

It is interesting to note what gets taken first on the feeders. At the moment I have sunflower seeds and fat balls on hanging feeders in the back garded and raisins, suet pellets and dried mealworms on the ground feeder. The sunflower seeds seem to be the food of preference for everything that goes to the hanging feeders. The tits move on to the fat only when a large flock of finches take over all the feeding ports for sunflowers. As a result, while I regularly refill the seed feeder the oringinal fat balls are still in the other feeder. I will have to swap them for some fresh ones soon as they are developing a layer of mould. The main visitor to the ground feeder seems to be the squirrel, which at least keeps it off the seed feeder. Its preference is for the suet pellets but then takes the raisins once the pellets are finished. Most of the mealworms seem to be taken by wood pigeons. The robin seems to prefer to forage rather than have a single big pile of food. I have some plant

The bullfinches haven't returned but we are regularly seeing goldfinches on all four ports of the seed feeder. I am having to top up the sunflower seeds every few days now. We are also seeing chaffinches and all the usual tits, blue, great, long tailed and coal. There was also a starling on the fat ball holder today but these aren't going down at anything like the speed of the seeds. I won't fill the other fat feeders for a little while yet. At ground level we have the usual selection, dunnock, robin, blackbird and wood pigeon but the pigeons don't seem to be frequent visitors as the ground feeder isn't being cleared yet. It took several days for a spillage of sunflower seeds to be cleared, I don't know if it was birds, field mice or badgers that were responsible. I was out and about in east London last weekend. Parakeets were very obvious in Hackney, I heard them from inside the car in Victoria Park Road (yes they are that loud) and saw them over Broadway M