Such ingratitude!

[IanP]

I've been keeping a closer-than-usual watch on the bird feeders as the squirrels are getting very imaginative. Today, I looked out and saw a solitary Great Tit empty a half-full peanut feeder, just picking out the nuts and slinging them on to the ground. The nuts are fresh, so why on earth was it behaving thus?

The pigeons think it's a great idea. Teamwork, I wonder?

[captaincarot]

i'm convinced they decide which one they want, (usually at the top in the middle) then dig theirway through them till they get it.

to the point that i've seen one of our sparrows keep looking back to a similar place in the feeder between flinging bouts

[IanP]

Well, it's never happened before this week, as far as I an tell. I've seen families of tits in the last few days and wondered whether the parents were being especially particular.

[the poacher]

perhaps its looking for a smaller nut,tits will try and feed nuts to young in the nest,not a good idea as one can imagine.you do hear stories at this time of year of what type of food is suitable for garden feeders,some may argue against it altogether,certainly the size of the holes in the feeder must feature(summer,winter),i see a good debate arising.

[LRM]

I'm refilling one hanging feeder 2 or 3 times a day. Not because they are eating the contents, but because they are chucking it all out onto the ground. Fed up with this waste, I put a tray underneath and when the feeder was empty, I poured the tray contents back in and it more than 3/4 filled the feeder. There are no peanuts in there as I removed them all from the seed mix. The luxury seed mix I use puts whole peanuts in, so I spend ages taking them out again at this time of year.

Also the songbird delight mix has dried fruit, raisins at the moment, but last year it had very large fruit of some kind, which I tore into bits. But I have heard that dried fruit should be soaked first.

If they shouldn't have whole peanuts or dried fruit why do the suppliers put them in?

I've crushed up some peanuts in the food processor and put them out separately, hopefully the birds will pick the appropriate size. The young should be flegded by now Bill Oddie (I think) said that birds would have sense to pick the appropriate food. Though they have shown them on the TV trying to stuff too large caterpillars down the baby's throat.


However, I see today the seed feeder plus sunflower hearts is empty again and the peanuts hardly touched, so perhaps they are not looking for peanuts, after all.

[the poacher]

im not sure suppliers differentiate between summer winter,i would think soaking dried fruit at this time of year maybe a good idea.on a different note,over the years,peanuts were blamed for the death of many carp due to the fact of the ignorance of fishermen who failed to soak,boil there peanuts when used in large amounts as groundbait,the fish not being able to digest same in large amounts,maybe not for the bird forum,but when you juxtapose both.just recently there have been one or two posts of people finding nests of dead tit chicks,are we looking for the answer