How To Attract Some Different Birds

[Bluesky]

Hello everyone

I'm hoping you might be able to give me some ideas to help attract some different birds to the garden, be it types of food, feeder siting, plants, nest boxes, etc.

We live in the country, surrounded by fields, and hedgerows so I'm sure there are plenty of candidates around but since an accident I'm no longer able to go out there tracking them down.

At the moment we have goldfinches, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, robins, blackbirds and collared doves. We used to have loads of sparrows, dunnocks and greenfinches but they've all gone awol :-(

Thanks in advance anyone.

[Lindsay-c]

Don't know if I'll be much help but it helps to check out what different bird's diets consist of. Like some birds eat insects and seeds where as others may also eat things like berries, snails and worms.

So the obvious thing to do it to put out some berries, bird seed and perhaps mealworms (dried or alive)

Other things which are a good idea are to plant colourful flowers and perhaps even berry/fruit producing plants which will attract insects to the garden which will then attract more birds.
You could mix some kind of mulch with your soil and keep it moist to attract earthworms.

[tcvarlh]

I was going to be facetious and say try a stronger aftershave, but as I don't know if you are male or female that might not be appropriate.

You seem to have a goodly selection, but variety is the... Dunnocks need undergrowth to be happy so they may have found somewhere with better cover, they might be back come Spring/Summer. With the weather getting warmer some of the insectivores will be zipping all over hunting. And as soon as Mom and Dad are busy with young they will be avidly searching for creepy-crawlies to quieten their bairns. So you may be a little short on feathered friends for a while. Despair not! Keep providing feed and the word will spread of a good restaurant in your garden. Your old visitors will be back sooner if not later. If you can, try planting seeding flowers or even millet. OK, these are used by birds in the Autumn but better late than never. Try turning over a patch of earth weekly to expose any insects. Leave things propped against sheds or walls to encourage spiders, broken tipped plant pots for earwigs, anything that would provide a home for Avian lunch packets.
Leave a bit of the garden to 'wild-up'. Oh and chase any cats away for a while.
h

[darrenm]

if you havnt it might be worth trying some of the smaller seeds you can get from pet shops and have mixed Canary seed mixes with mine and they can be mixed in with normal Wild Bird seed mixes. It brought House Sparrows to my garden in an area where they had almost gone but it took a year or so for their numbers to build. Tree Sparrows are also being fed with it on some Nature Reserves

[htcdude]

Agree with trying to get some berries growing in the garden, if you're surrounded by fields you might get some passing Redwings/Fieldfares stopping in

Nige

[HamieRaptorcliff]

This may well be the stupidest question ever posted on here, but I've been wanting to ask it for a while...

How do birds seem to know when food becomes available in your garden? I mean do they just stumble across it, can they sense it (smells, do they hear other birds filling their boots, etc), communication, or are they hiding away waiting for it?

My observation is that the more birds that are in my garden, the more birds come. My garden seems to go from zero birds to a few different varieties instantly. I can imagine that there are certain times in the day that birds are more active for food, but it just seems interesting that once one bird notices there is food, more seem to join.

As for the original post, I am currently going through this too. I know there are wider range of birds in my immediate local area than visit my garden, so I have been experimenting with different types of food and positioning of the feeders. No real success so far, but things seem to be pretty quiet in the garden at the moment anyway.

Cheers

[tcvarlh]

Originally Posted by HamieRaptorcliff

This may well be the stupidest question ever posted on here, but I've been wanting to ask it for a while...

How do birds seem to know when food becomes available in your garden? I mean do they just stumble across it, can they sense it (smells, do they hear other birds filling their boots, etc), communication, or are they hiding away waiting for it?

My observation is that the more birds that are in my garden, the more birds come. My garden seems to go from zero birds to a few different varieties instantly. I can imagine that there are certain times in the day that birds are more active for food, but it just seems interesting that once one bird notices there is food, more seem to join.

Not the stupidest question. Many very clever folk would like to KNOW. There are theories, but they are just that, Theory. I want it to stay a mystery personally. I suppose you'd have to be a bird to truly know.

The one becoming many observation is a bit like us, one man stands staring upwards, others notice and join in, they have no idea what man number one is looking at and the crowd of starers gets bigger. Curiosity doesn't just kill cats.

I once watched a immense flock of Rooks swirl overhead and settle into one particular field. By the end of the day the field looked as if 300 wild boar had been in it for a week, there wasn't one Chigger left underground. How the hell did the Rooks know the field was infested with Chiggers? The Farmer was a very happy bloke. One of life's little wonders.
h

[nightshade]

Surprisingly I see more Birds here in the town between two main roads than I ever did when I was near to farmland (although pheasants did come to the garden)
Good food is a must, I used to pick out and eat the "puffed" grains of wheat but we import harder grains which birds are not so keen on and these are included as fillers in cheaper bird mixes.
I buy Sunflower Hearts by the sackfull most Finches (and every other bird that visits) love these.
Sparrows like seed, they need plenty of grubs for the little ones they like communal living and they love a dense safe tree or thick safe hedge to congregate in, nearby high eaves that they can nest in as a community is the clincher.
Sparrow Feed
Here the Sparrows moved out and Starlings moved in as people had their eaves "plastiked" I altered the garden, planted cabbages, early lettuce etc. to get the caterpillars in planted a short wildlife hedge altered the ponds to one pond with a shallow stream and a shower for them to bathe and eventually they came back.
They do live over the road in new plastic eaves but they do largely eat and bathe and chat here

[Cowgirl]

Originally Posted by darrenm

if you havnt it might be worth trying some of the smaller seeds you can get from pet shops and have mixed Canary seed mixes with mine and they can be mixed in with normal Wild Bird seed mixes. It brought House Sparrows to my garden in an area where they had almost gone but it took a year or so for their numbers to build. Tree Sparrows are also being fed with it on some Nature Reserves

That sounds interesting Darren, have been thinking about getting some of this to scatter on the ground. Every morning I scatter a scoop of peanuts, suet pellets & sultanas on the grass so small seeds would be a good idea for the dunnocks, sparrows etc. Only thing is does it grow? Have changed my feed to straights to avoid this problem so don't want to start it up again.

[nightshade]

It does grow, one hot summer we had a border of Millet but all recycleable