Hobbies and Crafts

Kandj,I'm wondering if your Doves might be doing the 'mating' performance.Our Wood Pidgeons do the bending down on to the chest (with bottom in the air) .It is quite an act :-D and sometimes it does look like one might be limping !Ours perform on the top of the trellis fence ,and that is quite a balancing act .

Vera ,we often have birds fly into our windows .I dread it when I hear the thump and always get OH or my son to go and see if there is a little body lying on the patio.I don't mind picking up a dead bird .I always pick them up by their feet for some reason .
I hope once you get your feeding station up that you will get plenty of visitors.

Lesley ,I had a dream last night and I had 2 pigs!!!....I was feeding them Ham :-S :-S
They were my pets !!! :-S

Kandj at least you see a thrush, we rarely see one in this garden.

Vera, that feeding station sounds a good one, should be able to put a variety of food out and hopefully eventually the birds will come. A good time will be when they start to nest, they usually feed well then.
Stay with us and keep us in the picture. :-)

Vera, you have had lots of handy tips from Ann and Lesley but my contribution is that from my own experience you do need to be very very patient........ we are still waiting for the birds to use our window feeder several weeks since I put it in place.

Like you I also don't like the birds flapping around my head and wouldn't be able to touch one either. The others know that I admit to being a real wuss and now you are in on this info too lol.

Your feed station sounds interesting, my neighbour has one similar and the birds do use it regularly but roughly at set times which is very strange, but true!

So I wish you good luck and really hope that you soon will have a variety of birds to amuse you.

No sign of the lame dove this morning or his protective mate, but it has been raining very hard since around 7am and there are only lots of starlings that have come and eaten all the food on the ground tray plus our regular Mr and Mrs Blackbird (no sign of the new young blackbird though), oh and the thrush that shares the thick shrubbery with the blackbirds.

I am sure all of you are right about the birds having to get used to food being around our house. I expect they will come in time. Trouble is I am too impatient. I want it to be like our old house where I wasted hours watching the woodpeckers and jays and all the small birds.

Strangely I have a bit of a bird phobia. I can't bear them flapping around me or touch one but I do love to watch them in the garden. There was one occasion when a bird flew into one of our window panes and was concussed or injured. I couldn't pick it up but I couldn't leave it to be tormented by the cats either, so I stood guard over it till OH arrived home a long while later.

Anyway, we spent most of yesterday going round garden centres, diy shops, pet shops etc. to find some suitable hanging feeders. There are trees close by but the only ones in our garden are a couple of small witch hazels that we brought with us from the old place. Eventually in a garden centre about 30 miles away I found a good "feeding station". On a sort of pole but big enough to have 3 hanging seed feeders, a mesh feeder, a hanging contraption for suet cakes, hooks for fat balls and a good sized water container. All I've got to do is set it up, cross my fingers and wait.

Wish me luck

Nice to have you back safe and sound Jane but you didn't whisper quietly enough and I shuddered with the RAT tale........... and Lesley too using the "R" word too.
I hope I won't have nightmares now...... just don't like mice and rats are much worse!!

I hope the injuries to the dove weren't to serious kandj:-(

Two pigs were taken Jane :-( the injured ones were treated with penicillin and should all be fine :-D

Lesley x

This morning I watched two collard doves walking on the ridge tiles of our neighbours bungalows. The one in front walked slowly and kept stopping and turning her/his? head around to watch the following dove who obviously had hurt his leg because he limped and kept falling forward on to his chest and then became upright and limped along and fell forward again and again. Poor bird.
It was a real struggle to walk, and how sweet to watch the dove in front keep stopping and turning around. I watched for quite a while and then the postman knocked on our door with a parcel and when I got back to the window both doves had flown away.

Lesley ,yes they were the Blythburgh Pigs.I won't watch that clip because it sounds like it would be too upsetting to see .Did these people just kill the Pigs with the cross bows and leave them?.I daren't say here what I would wish to do to those who were responsible ! I would be banned from GR !!!
Haven't seen any sign of Ratty today :-D

I have never attempted mosaic before Ann and I really haven't got a clue what I will be letting myself in for so you'll probably see me on the craft thread asking for help :-D

So pleased to hear you had a good time in Suffolk, Jane were did you see the pigs was it Blythburgh? Only asking as just before Christmas this story was on our local news as well as in newspapers, the pictures are quite upsetting. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2517735/Rustlers-shoot-6-pigs-crossbows-Blythburgh-Suffolk.html

We live in a rural area and every year about November the rats come off the fields looking for food and shelter, with this year being so mild and wet we seem to have far more than usual, I'm not saying I like the long hard winters, I don't but they do help control vermin.

Lesley x

I like to think it was the Squirrel Ann :-D. As for those pigs .....WHIFFY !!!!!..I put the car window up pretty swiftly :-D.It's such a strong smell :-S
I am going to have a look around the bottom of the garden tomorrow just to see if I can see the coconut anywhere.

Maybe the rat took it Jane.

I do like pigs but not the smell

Ann the Pigs were so funny.Especially all the little piglets.I couldn't get a decent pic of them though .There was one field where all the Big Pigs were asleep in their corrugated shelters.All snouts pointing outwards ,and all the shelters in a row.But again I couldn't get a good enough close up .
I have brought home some wonderful Bacon and Sausages .(but don't like to think of those piggies lol)

My son saw a (I will say this very quietly so Kandj) doesn't hear) a RAT on our patio last night :-S.I don't think it was anything to do with the window feeder.More likely the big fat filled coconut that was brought down .Maybe some of the suet had come out of it and it had sniffed it out.
I still haven't found that coconut !!!!!!!.It must have been pretty heavy for the Squirrel or whatever has taken it :-S

photo of your pigs in muck on the photo blog Jane.

Glad you enjoyed the break, pity the weather wasn't kinder to you but at least you got away. Good to see all the birds from the hide.

Back from Suffolk :-D..We had a lovely time even if it was a tad on the chilly and damp side.We were so lucky that the heavy rain happened during the nights so we were able to get out and about no problem.
How sad to see so many hundreds of uprooted trees though .I really hadn't realised Suffolk had been so badly affected.Aldo the water on the roads.Several times we had to drive through so me deepish 'pools' and the water washed over the windscreen :-S
We did get to Minsmere Nature Reserve but didn't stay long as it was so cold and started to rain ,but we sat in this Hide (I felt like a proper bird watcher LOL) and saw Marsh Harriers,a Bittern,Sparrow Hawk ,and flying over were some kind of Geese and Ducks.Walking through the woods there were plenty of very busy Squirrels .One in particular was huge and had the biggest bushiest tail.

It's good to see my little friends are still here.The feeder is as busy as ever.But I am missing a big whole suet filled coconut !!!.The string is still on the branch but the coconut is nowhere to be seen :-S :-S.Something has carried it off :-| :-|

It is a filthy morning here and I think there was even a few bits of snow earlier.

I came home from Minsmere with a couple of HUGE bags of those Suet Pellets :-D

Lesley if you do any mosaic, your thoughts will be welcome on the craft thread. Jude used to do mosaic, she still might do. :-)

Vera I can repeat what Ann has said re food and water and as kandj know only to well you have to have plenty of patience.

Ann I have never tried to do mosaic but have promised myself I will try this year on at least one of my plant saucers that I use for the birds water. :-0 :-S :-D

I hope you and your OH enjoyed your holiday Jane. x

Lesley. x

Hello Vera and welcome. I am the very last person to offer advice in attracting birds, but like Ann, Lesley and Jane will surely have good tips and give lots of support.

I have had a window feeder in place since 19th December and hubby and I still wait patiently for visitors. We must have very fussy birds here in Yorkshire and so I hope you have better luck than we have.

Hi Vera,

I think it is the same as with Kandj and her window feeder. If the previous people didn't feed birds they will take a while to get used to your feeders, the sooner you can put hanging feeders up the better. If you have trees there will be birds. Try a mixed seed feeder and maybe a fat balls one (blue tits will go for fat balls,) also try one of the coconuts to hang. Blackbirds will go to the ground feeder when the weather is colder and the ground is hard, so will chaffinches.. This year with all the rain I think the birds are still finding bugs when they dig. We have found that things like apples which the birds have loved in previous years have been ignored so far this year. Make sure you have a water container for them, an old pot saucer is ok if you don't want a proper bird bath, that might attract them. Although again because of the weather, there is plenty of water around. They do have to keep their feathers washed from dust though.

Hope you can attract some soon. We all love the birds don't we? :-)

Not been on this thread before but thought I would have a look.

As I've said on other threads, we moved house four months ago from a place with a half acre garden, backing on to farmland, and with plenty of trees and water around. Our garden was always full of birds.

Now we have a very small patch, though there are plenty of trees around and we are not too far from the river. Yet we've hardly seen a bird since we moved. Someone bought us a rather nice ground feeder for Christmas, with a variety of suitable foods and after several weeks we have seen one robin on it. Yesterday I put out some home made granary bread thinking birds might at least pick the seedy bits out of it but it is still lying there untouched. Very disappointing.

I do intend to get some hanging feeders soon but would welcome any other advice for attracting a few birds in to the garden.

We have often had a pair of black caps in the garden, although not always at the same time (female has a brown rather than black cap.)