October and November are always quiet in my garden. I hve had some fat balls out for some time now (see previous post) and since seeing a couple of visits by a robin and one by a blue tit I added a seed feeer with a handful of sunflower seeds.
Today I had a brief visit by a mixed flock of blue and long tailed tits. they didn't stay long but at least put some visible peck marks on the fat feeder. Hopefully, now that they know that there is food here they will be back soon. I have also fulled the seed feeder but it is usually the finches that get through these in quantity.
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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