Thats it for another year

Another super year for fledgling birds in our garden, It has been a busy two weeks with the baby birds being fed and they got through six fat balls a day!

Now they have dispersed to the fields and the garden is silent save the regular Collard Dove and Wood Pigeon.

 

Has the RSPB advice about using fat balls as a 'winter feed' been changed?

Going to be a while before I can trim my hedges as they are still full of nesting birds.

 

That they should be put out as winter food and the nets removed last time I read up on the subject.

 

Why is that scrungee?

 

Basically, fat is not good stuff to be fed to baby birds.

The RSPB: Advice: When to feed wild birds

I've seen elsewhere that the like of fatballs aren't suitable because if fed to fledglings they wont get the moisture they need that they'd get from natural food like grubs, which is probably all the more important with the hot weather we've been having this year.

And it may not say it in that link, but the RSPB recommended elsewhere that plastic mesh is removed from fatballs to prevent birds getting tangled up in it, which you may not see where you have them up, but can also happen elsewhere.

 

I think it says commercially produced fat balls are OK in summer.

Copied this, is it round the right way, do you think?

"Birds time their breeding period to exploit the availability of natural foods: caterpillars in the case of blackbirds and song thrushes and earthworms in the case of tits and chaffinches."

Never seen a tit pulling out an earthworm.

 

The full quote is

But fat is still not recommended to be fed to birds when they are feeding nestlings.