Recipes for birds

[Tengu]

...No, that sort.

Dad feeds all the garden birds for miles around and (like many folk today) his bird food bill is bigger than his human food bill.

Hes not going to the supermarket of late, which has the cheapest fat balls and blocks.

I said to make his own; and he replied that the shops wouldnt sell him that much lard. Still, one block should make a few balls...

(He is excuse making! Normally he is so `can do` for a project...)

What do you do?

(I for one am doubtful on feeding nesting birds so much fat; but he is convinced they need to stick to their diet.)

 

[Veracocha]

I make use of orange juice cartons as a mold for my fat blocks. I cut off the top bit then fill with a mix of nuts, seeds and fishermans groundbait all mixed in with the melted fat. When it sets I peel off the carton and there's a big block ready for the birds. I find that around now nesting birds will concentrate more on insect life than the stuff I offer. Winter time it goes down a treat with just about every visitor to my table.

 

[Allison McKenzie]

Wilkinson is still open, they sell massive bags of sunflower hearts. The birds go mad for them. No fat required.

 

[Toddy]

You can buy fat balls in boxes of 150 on eBay for a very reasonable price. I usually get 12 for a pound, and I bought them more cheaply on eBay than I did buying them in the shops. Just the same fatballs too.

M

 

[Tengu]

He pays about £4.25 for 50

The blocks are 6 for £4

 

[Toddy]

If I buy a bucket of 50 it's £3.99, well it was before the lockdown. I usually buy the packs of six just because they're easier to store in the metal tin I use and it keeps them fresh.
Blocks I get 6 for £2.99.
A little cheaper than your Dad, but not much.

I'm 'isolated'.....I have an over reactive immune system and the family are worried so I'm being good, even if I am bored out of my tree....so can't get to the shops where I usually buy the bird food.
So, I bought on eBay.
I bought these (seller has upped his price a bit since I bought them, they cost me under £14 and that included delivery)

MALTBYS' STORES 1904 LTD 150 UNNETTED FAT BALLS WILD BIRD FOOD | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MALTBYS' STORES 1904 LTD 150 UNNETTED FAT BALLS WILD BIRD FOOD at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!

www.ebay.co.uk

Anyhow, I reckoned it was worth it not to have to pester someone to go and shop for the blooming things and it still worked out cheaper than the 12 for £1 I usually paid.

 

[Broch]

I either slow cook mine or roast them …..

Oh, hang on, not recipes for cooking birds, but recipes for bird food!!! Can't help you there

 

[Nice65]

I generally only feed them during winter and don’t do much feeding in the spring and summer while there are insects etc for them to eat. Pretty sure they don’t need to eat lard all year round.

 

[Broch]

I generally only feed them during winter and don’t do much feeding in the spring and summer while there are insects etc for them to eat. Pretty sure they don’t need to eat lard all year round.

Me too. Encouraging them to feed at a common feed site where parasites and bacterial/viral infection can be spread is not a good idea at the time when the young are crowded in the nest. I only feed over winter and even then not on mild days.

There are a few conservation societies now promoting this. The only reason RSPB don't is 'cos they make a lot of money out of bird food (allegedly)!

 

[Tengu]

Mostly from my Uncle.

I am myself doubtful; I think at least during nesting season birds should be eating a natural diet. Fat is good during the cold.

But My Father is detrmined to give the feathered dinosaurs what he feels they like; Sultanas and not mixed dried, for example.

And they seem to like five fat balls a day....

 

[Toddy]

I feed them all year round. I do disinfect, well I scrub them in a bucket of water and bleach, the feeders and the slabs underneath them.
I don't feed heavily in Summertime, and I don't feed peanuts or anything they can take off in big chunks when there are nestlings.
I live in what is now suburbia and there are so many things against the birds survival that I'm happy to do a little to keep them healthy and in decent numbers.
I don't use insecticide in the garden, but the birds do not so bad a job keeping on top of things and I freely admit that it's a pleasure to see them. We have buzzards and herons fly overhead, we have woodpeckers and jays, and the occasional moorhen that all visit the garden. The littler birds range from thrushes and blackbirds to blue tits, great tits, coal tits, siskins, wrens, reed buntings, long tailed tits, starlings......and the list goes on and on.
My garden runs next to a nature walk and a burn with a very diverse tree life around us.
Most of my neighbours encourage the wildlife, and we regularly see deer, foxes, badgers, and the like.

I can take the point about not feeding, but to be honest, there are enough cats around taking out the unwary that feeding the birds that survive just helps balance the predation.
The kestrel and sparrowhawks seem to target the pigeons which rather keeps their number down. Pigeons will breed at any time of year so long as there is sufficient food, so maybe the spilled seed that they gather keeps their numbers up a bit and feeds the raptors too.

 

[Broch]

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine so please forgive me if I'm sounding preacher like

It doesn't matter how often you disinfect or clean your feeders - if the next bird that turns up is infected then birds that come into contact with where it's been or directly are likely to become infected. It is because of my lifelong love of birds that I do not feed them except in the cold winter.

Trichomonas gallinae is now considered to be the major cause of the rapid reduction in finch number (particularly Greenfinch).

I quote from the paper 'Emerging Infectious Disease Leads to Rapid Population Declines of Common British Birds' Robert A. Robinson et all

<
Land-use change and habitat degradation have led to an increased national focus on garden habitats as a useful refuge for British wildlife [38]. It has been estimated that 48% of gardens in Britain provide some form of artificial food for wildlife [39]. Anthropogenic provisioning of wild birds in garden habitats influences contact rates among conspecifics and alters species complements at feeding sites; both factors influence pathogen transmission and exposure rates [40]. Garden bird feeding practice in Great Britain has altered over recent years with increased adoption of summer feeding and increased provision of sunflower and niger seed which might have led to increased concentration of birds at feeders. Trichomonas gallinae can be transmitted through direct contact between birds, for example courtship and feeding of young, and through indirect routes including shared food and water sources
>

 

[Toddy]

Broch, birds use the same branches, the same fences, the same trees, etc., etc., as each other.
If the disease is out there then they're mostly likely to get it not from a regularly cleaned and disinfected bird feeder, but from doing just what birds do.

I'm not disputing that the issue is real, but so is urbanisation and habitat loss, and so is cat predation.

My garden, and many many thousands like it, are just part of the natural world around us. That we keep it 'clean' enough is simply because we know the birds are literally on our doorstep and that we don't want them to go down with disease.

Country dwellers have much, much wider habitats for wildlife, most of us don't live in the countryside however.

 

[Broch]

OK, I never expected to convert you - My Dad, throughout his eighties, would spend £50 a month on bird food in summer alone. He took my advice on lots of things but wouldn't stop feeding them in summer .

But, with respect (and I really mean that ) - it's not the same thing as branches fences and trees. The probability of a bird landing on exectly the same spot as an infected bird is very low. On a bird feeder you get 20, 30, 50 more? birds on exactly the same spot every hour, searching for the best morsel, making tongue, beak and eye contact with where the last bird has been - the probabilities are orders of magnitude higher. You're not going to prevent that by cleaning your feeders unless you cleaned between every bird.

Let me make a comparison then I'll leave you alone. In the current dreadful situation you decide to go a stage further with your very clean kitchen and wipe down all the surfaces with a disinfectant. Now, you are 100% sure that none of your kitchen surfaces etc. can carry the virus.

There's a knock on the door and a total stranger asks to come in and have a drink of water and (for some reason I cannot fathom right now) you let him in. He touches all the surfaces, searches through the cupboards for a glass, and, maybe worse, sneezes into the cutlery draw. He goes to the tap, pours a glass of water and drinks it, leaves the glass on the drainer and leaves.

Your family walks in, one of them gets a drink of water using the same glass, and they touch the surfaces, go through the cupboards looking for where you hid the cake etc.

What was the point of disinfecting the kitchen? Why congregate at a feeding station with strangers (one in this case not tens or hundreds). Social distancing and segregation slows and even prevents infection transmission - we know that.

 

[Allison McKenzie]

It doesn't matter how often you disinfect or clean your feeders - if the next bird that turns up is infected then birds that come into contact with where it's been or directly are likely to become infected. It is because of my lifelong love of birds that I do not feed them except in the cold winter.

I have a sign in my garden advising the birds to fly 2m apart and queue for the feedet, for the most part they are compliant but the pigeons really don't appear to get it, the frisky little things.

 

[Toddy]

@Allison McKenzie

@Broch

You live in the country, with masses of natural habitat around you. I can see why you don't want to encourage dependence, but we live mostly urbanised, and if we don't feed the birds there are an awful lot fewer of them, even with disease.

I suspect that like city dwellers, urban birds have to develop really good immune systems. Those that don't don't breed.
I'm not disputing that disease is an issue, just that like us cleaning our own environment that cleaning the bird feeders really does help.

I feed a mixture of different foods, from fat blocks to sunflower seeds, from mixed tares to oats/barley/rye/wheat. I even feed them wireworms... the wrens are particularly keen on the ones I sprinkle beside the pond under the bog myrtle for them....but it changes through the year. The fat balls aren't so popular in Summer, until the nestlings start to fly, and then the new starlings descend in a raucous horde and devour the lot. Then they attack the lawn digging out leatherjackets, etc.,

Me feeding the birds is just part of their diet, but I honestly believe it helps more of them to thrive in an area where habitat loss is so very noticeable.

M

 

[santaman2000]

I rarely feed birds, but when I do I just use ordinary rice.

 

[Allison McKenzie]

I rarely feed birds, but when I do I just use ordinary rice.

 

[santaman2000]

Interesting. However I don’t poison the rice. Nor do we have a lot of pigeons.

 

[Tengu]

Well, we will have to put out hand gel dispensers for them then.

They are a great joy to watch, Even Blackie likes watching them, (Though I think they tease him,- the blackbirds show little fear. Perhaps they know he is a mouser?)

My Uncle, an urban dweller, lives backed onto a wood. He has masses of birds.

But Dad still has plenty