With the comparatively warm, wet and windy weather there is less activity on the feeders than I would expect at this time of year but the long tailed tits have finally started coming into the garden. One thing that I have noticed is the difference that feeder position makes. In the back garden there are two feeders on poles, one with a fat bar and one with sunflower seeds. The blue tits will fly to one of the bushes, look around, fly to the feeder and grab a seed or piece of fat and return to the bush to eat it. In the front there is a fat block hung in one of the quince trees. Here the blue and great tits will sit on the feeder and and eat what they take on the spot.
At least one brood of starlings have been regular visitors to the feeder and today the fledglings got the hang of taking the food for themselves. Other broods must be less developed as adults were still taking away quantities of fat. The tits aren't so common at the moment, I don't know if this is because they have dispersed, if wild food is available or if pressure from the starlings has driven them off. Single blue tits are dropping in fairly regularly and a coal tit took fat away as well. The woodpecker seems to have become a regular visitor and still has a brood to feed. He definitely comes before the starlings in the pecking order and keeps them off the feeder until he has finished. The new feeder with perching rings is popular with the chaffinches and the goldfinches, the latter suddenly seem to prefer the high energy mix to the nyjer seed. With all this demand for feeding young ones the fat is going down very rapidly and I am putting larger quantities out on the ground t...
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