Blue Tits not using my caged mealworm feeder

[Nicola Main]

I bought this feeder about a month or so ago Haiths Caged Live Food Feeder as the Blue Tits started inspecting our nestbox and I thought I'd give mealworms a go. We have a lot of Starlings visit our garden so the only option really was for a caged feeder but the Blue Tits won't go in it! Does anyone know of anything I can do to encourage them to use it? I put it on a branch next to my 4-port seed feeder but they keep by-passing it and going for the seed instead. They now have chicks and I'm keen to help them out as much as I can. Should I swap the mealworm feeder and put it where the seed one is and see if they go in it? Thanks in advance, Nicola.

[artdemole]

I think it could be that they are are after the live insects being soft and juicier for the young.They are also taking a lot of sunflower seed for the insides here.

[rossy]

Originally Posted by Nicola Main

I bought this feeder about a month or so ago Haiths Caged Live Food Feeder as the Blue Tits started inspecting our nestbox and I thought I'd give mealworms a go. We have a lot of Starlings visit our garden so the only option really was for a caged feeder but the Blue Tits won't go in it! Does anyone know of anything I can do to encourage them to use it? I put it on a branch next to my 4-port seed feeder but they keep by-passing it and going for the seed instead. They now have chicks and I'm keen to help them out as much as I can. Should I swap the mealworm feeder and put it where the seed one is and see if they go in it? Thanks in advance, Nicola.

at the moment the tits will be feeding the chicks with their natural food, ie caterpillars, grubs, insects, you could relocate your feeder, or open the holes in the mealworm feeder , birds arent daft as they like to be in and out before a predator appears, so are very wary, just put a few mealworm in till you see any activity, rossy.

[Quackajack]

My blue and great tits ignore meal worms but they love fat balls

[Elizabeth B]

Originally Posted by Quackajack

My blue and great tits ignore meal worms but they love fat balls

Fat balls are not good for feeding chicks - they need the moisture from grubs etc. I've laid in a stock of mini mealworms, now that we have chicks in all three boxes.

I have two of the Haith's caged feeders - they are used by robins, bluetits, great tits and nuthatches.

[RKB]

Mealworms aren't great for chicks either, as they're very chitinous (the hard exoskeleton). Tits tend to avoid feeding hard-bodied things to their young if possible, and prefer soft-bodied caterpillars and, if they're desperate, aphids. Waxworms would be much more preferred.

Dried mealworms are useless. As Elizabeth says, tit chicks get all their water from their food, so dry foods like seeds and dried mealworms can lead to chicks dying from lack of water.

If tits are taking seeds into the box then there is not enough natural food in the area and the chicks are starving. Birdfeeders during spring have lulled the parents into thinking it's a food-rich area, but there is not enough chick food to raise a brood. This seems fairly common in gardens, where chick mortality in the nest is quite high.

[Elizabeth B]

Chris Mead suggested mealworms for chicks in an aarticle about live foods for birds::

In contrast to maggots, mealworms are reared on vegetable matter - just like the leaf-munching caterpillars the birds eat in the wild - and are a safe way of feeding chicks. Chicks reared on them don't need water since the mealworms contain sufficient moisture.

Full details here:
Live Foods

[RKB]

Originally Posted by Elizabeth B

Chris Mead suggested mealworms for chicks in an aarticle about live foods for birds::

In contrast to maggots, mealworms are reared on vegetable matter - just like the leaf-munching caterpillars the birds eat in the wild - and are a safe way of feeding chicks. Chicks reared on them don't need water since the mealworms contain sufficient moisture.

Full details here:
Live Foods

With great respect to Chris Mead (who left us some years ago), he's comparing them to maggots, not saying they're the bee's knees. If you have a poke around some of the aviculture and reptile forums you'll see that many are now quite down on live mealworms as a basic foodstuff. If we compare caterpillars and mealworms, there are obvious big differences in the chitin exoskeleton. The head end, especially, is very difficult for young birds to handle. When hand-rearing, it's necessary to crush the head before feeding. So I stick by my comment that mealworms aren't great for chicks (but waxworms are).

[Elizabeth B]

Originally Posted by RKB

The head end, especially, is very difficult for young birds to handle. When hand-rearing, it's necessary to crush the head before feeding.

We've often seen the parents removing the head, before they feed a chick.

[shenk1]

Same here.

All the tits remove the heads before flying off to feed

Robins whack them on the fence to stun them

The missus just whinces but I tell her she bites my head off and bashes it against a wall all the time