The fat pellets put out for the robins in the ground feeder trays seem to be attracting magpies. The pellets can vanish within 15 or 20 minutes of being put out and, as often as not, I don't even seev the culprits. Luckily the robins seem quite content with the dried mealworms which the magpies definitely regard as second best.
The magapies are suprisingly nervy birds for their and will fly off at the slightest movement within the house, even just a twitch of an upstairs curtain.
This time of year is usually very quiet when it comes to garden birds but we do have regular visits from blue and great tits that require keeping the sunflower seed feeder about half full althouhg they have mostly ignored the fat ball that I hung on the other feeder. Chaffinches and goldfinches also turn up occasionally but only singletons. A wren has put in an occasional appearance but had no interest in the ground feeders.
Uneaten food usually vanishes before the next morning ass we often get a badger passing through the garden at some point during the night. Even without the camera trap the flattened path from the hole that they use under the fence is a good indicator of their presence.
A few regular visitors seem to be missing altogether. We used to have a resident pair of wood pigeons and dunnocks foraging among the shrubs at the bottom of the garden together with a blackbird. I can do without the pigeons but miss the others.
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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