The Natural Gardener
It’s amazing the range of bird feed you can buy these days: nuts, fat balls, suet or berry cake, dozens of different types of seed – the shops have gone mad for it as they know we love to help our wildlife, and it’s rather nice we can offer our feathered friends such an array of plenty.
Perhaps you feed your birds all through the year, like I do, but it’s at this time of year that it’s most important. You may wonder whether all this intervention by us really helps them – surely there’s lots of natural food about? Well, you’ll be encouraged to know it’s pretty much vital to many birds’ survival during scarce times.
Fewer insects, slugs and snails are around, and fewer plants offer up food. Think of it a bit like a compensation scheme for all the food of theirs we’ve removed from the countryside over the years.
The more varied the range of foods we put out, the wider the range of birdlife we’ll attract. Give them a full-on banquet and they’ll all come to the party! High energy foods are great for them now – peanuts, fat balls, suet cakes – though to save money, kitchen scraps of cheese and cake crumbs, pastry, brown bread and cooked potatoes are perfect. Why not pop to a pet shop where they sell live waxworms and mealworms for reptiles? Robins will love it. We have a bearded dragon lizard at home who eats lots of live grubs – I hope he doesn’t mind sharing!
It pays to get good quality food, preferably wheat free. It’ll prevent you growing a farmer’s field in your back yard from all the dropped seed. Always put out some water, and fill up and clean feeders regularly.
A key thing to remember, though, is that supplemental feeding alone won’t sustain our declining bird populations. A far more natural, cheaper and ecofriendly way of bringing in the birds is to plant some hedges and trees, grow plants that produce berries, such as rowans, ivy, dog roses and hawthorns, and leave a few insects and slugs to live in your garden, too.