Small Bird Report

The last time I reported on our small garden birds, here, we were fighting a battle to keep the starlings, with their dreadful table manners, off the bird table. We did make some progress but it was at the expense of more and more wire. Each time further lengths are added it puzzles the smaller birds but most, but not all, quickly find their way in.

Meanwhile, the starlings have made a nuisance of themselves elsewhere, finding ways of hanging on to the oat feeder which we had thought impossible and then scattering oats everywhere. This does mean that some of the more neglected birds, like the blackbirds, get fed on the ground below but Lidl is struggling with the demand for oats.

For my birthday I was bought a very smart squirrel-proof feeder which I confidently expected would also keep bigger birds out. The blue tits were first to work it out, followed by the sparrows, but the starlings soon found their way in. So we once again added more and more green wire which, inevitably, they found their way round.

So there has been further huge expenditure on a sheet of 14mm x 14mm galvanised iron mesh so the starlings really, certainly, absolutely cannot get at the feeding points.

This female sparrow worked her way over the barrier within five minutes but we wait with bated breath to see if the starlings can get in.

This all sounds very discriminatory as the sparrows, in increasing numbers, are the ones who can get into everything - including this tits-only peanut feeder. The general mayhem does put off other birds. The coal tits, which were the first species to visit us, have never returned. The blue tits come and go quickly when the other hoards aren't around. The robins keep visiting but spend half their time fighting with each other. And the dunnocks just get on quietly with getting fed.

However, it's just so, so good to have plenty of small birds in the garden after the small-bird desert of Felixstowe.