Archived on 6/5/2022

Garden life

BigAl
20 Mar '20

Stuck at home and looking at the garden a lot these days it strikes me that many birds don’t care about the birdseed I put out for them. What do they want. Silver service? Canapés? And that’s why squirrels go absolutely ballistic with joy when they see this free meal for them. And also - cats. They’re far too many of these feline killing machines. Many are obese, ugly and of limited intelligence despite what their loving owners think. It all went wrong when cats got an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical named after them. That’s when they got above their station.

GillB
21 Mar '20

I put cheese, rich tea biscuits out on a tray near our house. All birds love these!
Blackbirds (& magpies, admittedly not a favourite) love grapes or blueberries.
If you have a lot of cats, place the food somewhere safe! Although we tend to find that robins & blackbirds are ground feeders, hence why we put the tray near the house as cats tend (if any) to be on the back fence or lurking at the back of the garden.

marymck
21 Mar '20

I used to melt down suet and mix it up with grains and dried fruit and nuts, then pour it into removable containers to set. The birds used to love these in winter, but when they got small enough the squirrels used to run off with them.