Newbie... Early Garden Feeding Notes

[BennyTheDip]

Hi there, I've just joined and until about a week ago I had no idea about birds, but I've suddenly developed an interest and thought I would share my thoughts/ask a few questions.

I live in a first floor flat in N London and have a roof garden, which I recently noticed some blue and orange coloured birds running around in one morning. I don't remember ever noticing these birds before but having googled them I believe they were chaffinches. To try and encourage them to come back I put out a tray of bird seed and waited to see what happened.

Initially there was no interest but now I have seen blackbirds, robins, and wood pigeons coming into the garden - at the weekend they were all over the place. There's a huge tree just next to our roof which could be home to alot of birds.

I saw a blackbird, and a brown version occasionally with it, which I thought was a female, but I wonder if it is in fact a juvenile? The brown one seemed to join the male at the tray, but made no effort to eat its own seed - instead squawked at the male to feed it from its own mouth, which I thought was quite funny. Would a juvenile still pester its parents even though it seems to have grown to near full size, or is this female behaviour?

The pigeons have taken over now though, initially there was one who thought he owned the tray, and spent a whole day at the weekend chasing off another wood pigeon, but seemed to give in and now there are three hogging the whole roof garden, in fact they knocked the tray over and made a mess with their droppings. I have started chasing them off as they are quite disruptive, and a pest if we want to sit out on the roof garden - it's like sitting next to a runway at Heathrow with these big birds flying in. Anything I can do to discourage the pigeons and encourage the smaller ones?

Also, no sign of the chaffinches... how common are these in urban areas and would they be attracted to a tray of seed?

[aeshna5]

The brown Blackbird is a juvenile from the behaviour- this is quite common.

You can buy cages that allow in smaller birds but prevent birds like pigeons entering. Otherwise difficult to deter them without putting off the other species.

Chaffinches are reasonably common in London's parks so if you have some decent tree cover you may get them. Probably more numerous in the winter when our residents are joined by some of their continental cousins.

Welcome to WAB + glad you're getting interest out of your birds.