Garden Centre

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Feed the birds for Christmas

All you need is

Lard or suet
Wild Bird seed, or your own gathered garden seeds and berries, or millet
Oats or breadcrumbs or cake or biscuit crumbs
Old hard cheese, grated
Yoghurt pots
Saucepan
Spoon
String or twine

Begin by making holes in the bottom of your yoghurt pots and thread length of twine or string through it – I use a hot skewer to make holes but this does smell a bit of hot plastic so I tend to do it in the shed!

The best ratio for this recipe is one part fat to two parts dry mixture, whatever that may be, but play around a bit, as different ingredients have very different ‘stickability’ and anyway, the birds never complain if it’s a bit tough to peck at or a bit crumbly.

Simply mix dry ingredients together in a bowl and then gently melt some lard or suet in a saucepan or microwave and pour it into the mixture, stirring madly until the fat is absorbed and the mixture sticks together.

Fill the pots with your warm fat mixture, compressing it down well and set the pot in the fridge overnight to really get hard – then either slide off or cut open and peel away the pot. Tie a big knot at one end of the twine to secure the cake and hang it in a tree or shrub (reasonably protected from rain and sun or it will either be washed away or melt) and wait for the birds to realise dinner’s ready!

Kitchen scraps can be added – but never anything too salty which dehydrates birds and can kill them so don’t add salted peanuts – in fact I prefer not to use anything that isn’t native, so I will put in chopped walnuts or hazelnuts, but not weird exotic things or raisins. I do put in lots of seeds like sunflowers, especially ones from the plants like poppies that I see the birds visiting in my garden – each autumn I just take some seedheads and shake the seeds into a jar, and then pour that into the bird cake when I make it – if I’ve seen them feeding on the seeds then it’s a good bet they’ll be thrilled to find them in their cake

Labels: bird food, birds, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:41 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

What do you want for Christmas?

This is what I want. Not just the dovecot but the birds to go with it. I’d love to have doves but they are (a) unbelievably expensive and (b) not terribly hardy. So I’d be willing to settle for a pair of homing pigeons.

Interestingly, scientists have finally solved the mystery of how pigeons, dropped off hundreds of miles from home, find their way back to their lofts. According to a study, the birds use the strength of the Earth's magnetic field to work out where they are relative to home. "We are now confident that pigeons do use the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field to determine position during homing," said Todd Dennis of the University of Auckland, who led the research. In his experiment, Dr Dennis released homing pigeons in an area of New Zealand where the Earth's magnetic field is naturally distorted, called the Auckland Junction Magnetic Anomaly. His idea was that, if the intensity of the magnetic field influenced the birds' ability to position themselves, they would be confused by the anomaly when released. Once out, he found that the birds flew up to four kilometres in the wrong direction, parallel or at right angles to variations in strength of the local magnetic field, before redirecting themselves towards their loft.

The real reason for wanting pigeons in the garden is that they attract any number of other birds – and I’d like more of our feathered friends to visit us. We had a woodpecker last year and have seen a thrush already this November, so anything that encourages this progress would be great!

Labels: birds, christmas gifts

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:09 AM 0 Comments

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