Fussy birds!

[mat777]

We have several different peanut, mixed seed and fat ball feeders for the birds in our garden (green circled) and they absolutely love them - we have robins, sparrows, tits and even crested woodpeckers feasting on them regularly. The seed feeders alone need about 5kg of seed a week with the amount that gets eaten.

However, recently we have put up a new feeder (circled red) that consists of a frame with a metal bar in the middle, on which you are supposed to impale bits of fruit. It has been hanging up with an ordinary ripe supermarket apple on it for 2 weeks now and so far nothing has touched it at all. We cant understand it, as birds normally eat the apples off trees so it cant be the fruit choice can it? We did wonder if it was hanging too low down, or too far from safe predator-proof hiding places (just out of shot on the left, is a huge bank of dense, mixed trees 6ft deep and 50ft long), but then the right hand side seed feeder also hangs at the same height and is even further from the trees.

We're stumped, anyone got any ideas? (open the url in new tab if you want to get a better resolution version)





hmm, on a side note - interestingly the GPS metadata on that photo says my house in Cheshire is actually in the North Sea, equidistant between Edinburgh and Copenhagen. So much for iPhone GPS accuracy

Edited by mat777 on Wednesday 17th April 17:47

[mrmaggit]

Worst "look at our house in the country" thread ever.

But seriously, our local bird population prefer apples and pears etc to be on the floor. We get all except woodpeckers on ours, the squirrels have their own feeder, sadly we lost one of our blackbirds today to something, no idea what.

[KelWedge]

I know you said it was a new feeder, but have you tried giving it a wash, all feeders shoud be cleaned every now and then.

[rosie11]

Try putting the fruit on the ground and giving it bit of a squish to expose the flesh, blackbirds,thrush and starlings will love it and find eating it much easier .