Feed the birds.
‘Tits like coconuts’ might sound like the perfect prompt for comedy material, but it is a serious matter.
The weather may currently be mild, but the winter can throw a cold spell at us at any time, and with garden bird numbers diminishing rather alarmingly, this is the time of year when our feathered friends need a little support.
Starlings may be noisy bastards, and sparrows and thrushes might appear to be nothing more than ‘little brown jobs’, but all are in serious decline. Because we see them every day it is easy to overlook the fact that their numbers have dropped by more than 80% in the last thirty years.
This is why everyone should FEED THE BIRDS.
Except…
Do not feed the birds.
The activity of feeding the birds must be tackled with a little intelligence, so for those of you who lack a little intelligence I will write slowly so you can keep up.
Having just said that we must feed the birds, there are times when we must not feed the birds. Most notably, when we are stood within reading distance of a sign that says DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS. These signs are usually encountered at the seaside and refer to the feeding of seagulls. (Yes, I know that there is no such species as a Sea Gull, but I use the term in a generic sense to refer to the big white noisy fuckers that swoop and steal our Granddaughter’s ice cream.)
This activity of daylight robbery is becoming ever more prevalent and is giving the birds a very bad reputation. ‘Flying rats’ is a term often used, usually by people who think it their duty to try to poison them because they had the audacity to land on the roof of their house.
“They tear the bin bags apart and make a mess,” people protest, grinning as they plot the cruelest way to kill them. Here’s an idea for you… DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS! By this, I mean don’t leave bin bags out for them to peck at. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that a bag full of chicken carcass, pizza crusts and chips will smell like a fancy restaurant to an intelligent opportunistic species. In this scenario, I think we all know who the genius is.
Everyone marvels at the ingenuity of clever species, and we all love to see squirrels completing assault courses. After any TV documentary about the world’s cleverest animals people will be chatting for days about crows that can solve problems and donkeys that do crosswords. Even in their own homes people love to build relationships with wild animals and love it when a friendly robin becomes tame enough to take food from the hand. And yet, when a seagull takes someone’s pasty from the hand the victim launches into some sort of demented morris dance and tries to dropkick the bird across the promenade. If only humans were as intelligent as animals. It doesn’t take membership of Mensa to realise that if you teach a bird to eat human food it will try to eat human food. DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!
Fuck a duck.
Not only does this cause a problem for the seaside visitors as they try to fend off attacks from gulls with a taste for battered sausage and chips, but it is incredibly harmful for the birds themselves. For example, Eider are one of our prettiest ducks and because they look nice and do not flee in the presence of humans we tend to think they are ‘friendly’ and asking for a snack. Also, as everyone knows, if an animal lives by the sea, it obviously loves fish and chips. This propensity to throw leftovers to the birds not only imprints a dependency upon them, but is causing them to suffer a calcium deficiency. Calcium is a vital component in the formation of egg shell, and therefore, its absence in the adult bird’s diet is leading to the eggs failing. Strangely, it seems that a species evolved to dive for crustaceans and molluscs such as mussels has considerably different dietary requirements to the average seaside tourist. Your idea of a balanced diet may be a hot dog in one hand and a 99 in the other, but it will do little good to the balance of nature. DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!
Keep it to yourself.
And this applies to all birds, not just ducks, so, as much as Rick Stein’s ‘cod and chips, bread and butter and a cup of tea’ may be delicious, it is something best enjoyed and kept to oneself. DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!
Garden goodness.
If you want to feed the birds, please do it properly, with some fat balls, seeds or mealworms.
And remember, as the saying goes… tits like coconuts.
For advice and information about feeding the birds in your garden Vine House Farm is a great source of information as well as a supplier of all you need to do it.
Photo by chapmankj75 
Just wondering if the bags of mixed seeds are the right thing for a mixture of wild birds – starlings, robins, wrens, wood pigeons, black birds to have. I have a feeder, fat balls and fresh water hanging on my washing line for all to enjoy – much to the annoyance of my neighbours cat, as the birds look down at it chirping away. When it’s not around I put a bowl of water down as a bird bath so we all have fun – I enjoy the birds company/singing and because I feed him, I have a noisy little wren (well, he’s small and brown so I thought that’s what he is) who raises holy hell when it starts to rain on my clothes. I have hung a teapot up for them to use as a nesting box – no takers yet. Anything else I should do ?
Hi Maria. It sounds like you are doing something right if you are attracting all those birds to your garden. Fresh food and water is essentially the key. It is also good that you think to keep the feeders out of the way of the cats. I am a cat person, but I am sorry to say that too many wild birds are killed by cats every year. During the breeding season, the chicks can be particularly vulnerable because once a cat finds a nest it tends to treat it as a larder and will revisit until it has had the entire brood. It is always worth bearing this in mind when you put up a potential nesting site, be it a box or a teapot.
As for what food is good or bad for birds, this RSPB page http://ow.ly/HqhsQ is an interesting read to know what to put out. I usually get my bird foods from Vine House Farm http://www.vinehousefarm.co.uk/ and I find the information they give about each food and what is best for what species is very useful to decide what to put out in my particular garden.
Keep feeding the birds and they will continue to give you hours of pleasure.
We live in a rural village yet we see few birds in our leafy garden. This despite being surrounded by countryside teeming with birds: flocks of blue tits, sparrows and finches in the hedgerows, fields of crows, a permanent murmuration of starlings in the old pine trees, buzzards and kestrels soaring over the woods and verges, song thrush on the common and the distant thrumming of woodpeckers.
We have a feeder, which I regularly wash and refill with fresh fat balls when the previous untouched ones have gone mouldy. I put out fresh water in a bowl (with a rock in it to make perching easier) on one of our raised beds and we have a mini-pond in a shady corner but they are rarely used by any birds. We have privet hedges, crab apples and a cotoneaster full of fruit. Yet all we see are the occasional blackbird and a couple of pigeon.
The only explanation I can give is that the leafy estate we live on is crawling with cats – dozens of them that roam the streets, foul people’s gardens and drive the birds away by their constant stalking. I’ve seen one catch and kill a perfectly healthy but slightly too slow pigeon. I’ve seen them go for sea gulls (whether they are a species of bird or not) that occasionally swoop in low but never land. Anything smaller doesn’t stand a chance.
The cats hide in the bushes and climb the trees (there are no nests in the bushes, trees or bird-boxes on our estate) – they stalk the fence tops and lie in wait on the roofs of shed and the edges of walls. You hear them fighting night and day because the pressure on territory is so great. And on my morning walks I will see a dozen of them within 50 yards of my house and invariably the fresh feathers from one of their victims on someone’s front lawn.