Here’s how to keep your garden birds happy this winter:
▸ Provide a variety of seeds, nuts, fruit and meat – different birds like different things. ▸ Never give salty food or desiccated coconut.
▸ Offer stale bread and cake, but never anything mouldy.
▸ Try cooked potato, nuts, raisins, biscuits, cheese, leftover cat food, dripping.
▸ Supply a shallow dish of water for bathing and drinking.
▸ Wash your bird table once a fortnight with hot water and washing up liquid.
▸ Bake a bird cake! Mix 1kg self-raising flour, 500g butter, a little sugar and water to make a thick dough. Add grated cheese, apples, raisins, seeds, and so on, and then form the stiff dough into little balls. Bake them in a moderate oven for 25 to 30 minutes. The birds will love them!
Garden Birdwatch 2009
If you love wild birds, here is your chance to join the RSPB’s 30th Big Garden Birdwatch, which will be held on 24 and 25 of January. The RSPB are hoping to make it the biggest Garden Birdwatch yet. Taking part is very simple – simply spend an hour that weekend counting the birds that you see in your garden or in a local park. Record the highest number of each species seen (not flying over) at any one time. It’s important you don’t count all the birds you see because some birds will return to your garden many times in the hour. For example, seeing the same blue tit come back 10 times does not make for 10 blue tits!
The RSPB provide a downloadable counting sheet, and offer an online form to help you send in your results easily. Please visit: www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/2009/index.asp for details
Help your feathered neighbours get onto the housing ladder Sparrows and starlings begin house-hunting this month – can you help them? Their numbers have fallen drastically in recent years. If you are handy with a hammer and nails, here is what every sparrow and starling is looking for:
� Sparrow nest box: about 200mm tall on a 130mm square base with an entrance hole about 32mm in diameter. Sparrows like to nest communally, so why not provide several, all cosily together? That way you’ll get an extended family moving in…
� Starling nest box: about 400mm tall on a 180mm square base, with a 45mm entrance hole.
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Our feathered friends