What do your garden birds enjoy eating?

[Kempstonian]

I've got plenty of sparrows here, as well as pigeons and a few collared doves. The dove numbers are thinning out now. A couple of years ago I had 11 in my garden at once but now there are just two or three. Greenfinches have become very scarce too. There used to be a large group of them when I first came here 12 years ago. The goldfinches are more numerous than they used to be though.
Last year I had a pair (later three) of great spotted woodpeckers but they didn't come back this year. (They love peanuts btw). I saw a solitary green woodpecker early this year. I only saw it once but he/she was a daily visitor in my neighbour's garden.
A local sparrow hawk which used to pick off the occasional dozy dove seems to have died I think as I haven't seen it for a few years.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

I have trained my chickens to come down to the house on ringing a Tibetan prayer bell. It’s useful for doing a headcount, medicating and feeding scraps.

If they are shut in and I ring the bell, jackdaws come instead. Clever baskets.

 

[Dave7]

I've got plenty of sparrows here, as well as pigeons and a few collared doves. The dove numbers are thinning out now. A couple of years ago I had 11 in my garden at once but now there are just two or three. Greenfinches have become very scarce too. There used to be a large group of them when I first came here 12 years ago. The goldfinches are more numerous than they used to be though.
Last year I had a pair (later three) of great spotted woodpeckers but they didn't come back this year. (They love peanuts btw). I saw a solitary green woodpecker early this year. I only saw it once but he/she was a daily visitor in my neighbour's garden.
A local sparrow hawk which used to pick off the occasional dozy dove seems to have died I think as I haven't seen it for a few years.

We have seen a sparrow hawk several times recently... its sits on the trellis then swoops.
We used to get a woodpecker (a pair sometimes) but local house building has got rid of them.

 

[Kempstonian]

Yeah, they do a lot of swooping! I saw one go for a pigeon in a large apple tree at the bottom of my garden (its actually in the garden at the back of me) and it missed. The pigeon shot out of the tree at a few hundred miles an hour and disappeared down the road. The hawk sat on a branch and sulked for at least 20 minutes before flying off.
Last sighting of it was two or three years ago when it nabbed a blue tit that had been investigating a nest box that I have a camera in. I think the hawk saw it going in and waited for it to come out. So I might have lost a whole season of blue tit breeding to watch.

 

[Rezillo]

Fatballs (not cheap ones as they get too hard to peck in cold weather), grain mix, peanuts, niger seed and sunflower seeds/hearts. This gets us at any one time up to 20 blue tits, 10 long tailed tits, 6 goldfinches, 2 greater spotted woodpeckers, 1 coal tit and 10 great tits, plus usual birds on the ground. We have feeders right by the kitchen window.

This was in our garden a few days ago. They tend to go for the blackbirds.

 

[Rezillo]

To continue with the above, we had seen no coal tits here before until October this year, when this one appeared:

We called him Chesney (our one and only coal tit) but today, coal tit number 2 turned up.

We also had a long tailed tit invasion today - up to six on the window feeders and at least as many again on the main ones.

Great to watch them from barely a metre away behind the kitchen windows.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Small children

 

[Dave7]

We had at least 8 long tail tits visit earlier. Feeding on the peanuts. Not had a flock of them for ages.
We used to get regular Coal Tits but not had them for a while.

 

[nickyboy]

Sunflower hearts seem as popular as any to me
We see some unusual birds on the feeders such as Nuthatch, Lesser Redpoll, Siskin, Brambling. But to balance this we never see House Sparrows or Starlings in the garden, despite them nesting v close by

For those finding certain birds thin on the ground it's often down to availability of natural food elsewhere. Gardens are dangerous places for birds so if they can get natural food easily elsewhere, they will. Wait for a cold snap, they will come then

 

[Skibird]

Fat balls/slabs, various seeds and most left over food. I'm rubbish as identifying anything other than the standard robins, magpies etc, but we get many different one's including this one, which is not very clear unfortunately.

 

[Basil.B]

A sparrowhawk has just enjoyed a poor old pigeon in my garden.

 

[nickyboy]

Fat balls/slabs, various seeds and most left over food. I'm rubbish as identifying anything other than the standard robins, magpies etc, but we get many different one's including this one, which is not very clear unfortunately.

It's a female Sparrowhawk

 

[Skibird]

It's a female Sparrowhawk

Thanks, I thought is was a type of hawk but wasn't sure which one.