Chiltern Birder

The advantage of using a tripod with the camera trap is that you have far more control over the position. With it set to full height I captured this nice clip of the badger at the ground feeder. After my previous post about choices made by the birds I noticed that his preference was for the raisins before clearing up the fat pellets.

So far winter hasn't brought anything exciting to the garden but, with the mild weather, it is clear which are the most favoured bird foods. The finches, of course, love the sunflower hearts. The blue and great tits are also showing a preference for sunflower seed and largely ignore the fat balls in the adjacent hanging feeder. I have even seen them waiting on the feeder arms for the finches to leave a free port rather than peck at the fat balls. I also hung a FlutterButter peanut butter feeder next to the seed feeder and that has been totally ignored. We were getting a small group of starlings who were making a big dent in the fat block and the front and the fat balls in the back garden but they have moved on and I am starting to become concerned that the remaining contents are going to become mouldy. At ground level I am feeding raisins, fat pellets and dried mealworms. The robin will take fat pellets and mealworms but can't clear the feeders on his own. A blackbird will t

In most years I only see starlings in the garden in spring and early summer when they turn out mob handed and get through half a kilo of fat in a day. In the past week, however, I have had a part of three on the fat feeders in both the front and back gardens. Another usual visit today was by a pair of greenfinches who briefly came to the sunflower seed feeder. The feeders are all very busy now with seed being topped up daily. The dried mealworms in the ground feeder are proving popular with the blackbird and robin but the fat pellets only seem to be of interest to the magpies and wood pigeons. Despite the claims by the feed merchant the raisins are generally ignored by the birds but the badger cleans them up overnight. A group of long tailed tits made a suprise visit at dusk today. Judging by their behaviour I suspect that they were taling a last feed of the night before roosting in my neighbours leylandii. This seems rather more attractive to birds now that old man's beard has