I've always wanted to set up a good feeding station in our back garden to attract a wide range of birds. Like many of the members on here I suspect I'm love photography so I'm looking forward to getting the birds to come to me so I can take some great shots.
How should I go about setting up the station? What kind of food should I put on it, and will it greatly affect which birds visit?
You should try and put a mixture of foods at the station as it will affect which birds visit to a certain extent. Remember to be patient when you set up the station - sometimes birds find it immediately and other times it may seemingly be ignored for a long time.
I've had a small bird table set up for a few days now. To start with it worked and I had a few birds including a robin on it fairly quickly. Unfortunately the squirrels also found it very quickly, so I'm going to have to get something a bit more secure
The eternal battle with those cheeky squirrels! They are diabolical, those squirrels
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Kingfisher
I know if you use niger seed finches like it ( we get goldies & greenfinches) as per my pic on Bird of the Day. We also use nuts for tits & a good mixture with dried mealworms in it, this attracts robins, dunnocks,sparrows, & unfortunately the B42's of the bird world.... collared doves who rock the feeding station when they land..
B42's of the bird world.... collared doves who rock the feeding station when they land..
That made me laugh, a great descripion of collared doves
We haven't any pigeons or doves that are that large here. I think all the native columbids are quite small compared to the collared doves.
Kingfisher
Further to my last comments I have posted some pics taken yesterday of my feeding station. I bought it & placed it next to the fence between us & next door. It is surrounded by holly bushes & therefore in almost an artificial tree line. It is 8 feet from our patio doors. I thought that it might not work there being so close to the house but it was an instant success.
The pics I have posted are of a cheeky squirrel who also likes the feeding station. He is eating a seed mixture from a tray with dried mealworms & berries in it.(for robins,dunnocks & misc birds)We turned both of our seed feeders into niger seed as we had that many goldies coming that they were fighting all the time so now we can accomodate 8 at a time. The nuts are for great tits, blue tits & coal tits. We did try fat balls but no-one liked them. We can add on other attachments but at the moment we have not bothered as we are happy with the mix of birds we are getting. We also have a mature ivy on the side & regularly disturb the blackbirds who are busy stripping the berries off it.The squirrel incidentally ,was chased away more than 6 times so that the linnet who was waiting in a tree could have its turn but it was so cheeky it just hopped over the fence & then came back.The squirrel family lives in 40 foot high leylandi in next doors garden so it is a regular.
It's great that you managed to get an actively used feeding station so close to the house, 8 feet is a very small distance. Explains how you can get such good pictures from inside your house!
You also seem to be getting a wide range of birds, so it seems like your setup is a good one to imitate.
For a really natural looking photo, try getting an old branch, sticking it upright in front of some bushes, drilling some holes in it and filling them with fat or nuts. When the birds feed on these, you can photograph them in a very natural pose.
For a really natural looking photo, try getting an old branch, sticking it upright in front of some bushes, drilling some holes in it and filling them with fat or nuts. When the birds feed on these, you can photograph them in a very natural pose.
That's a good tip. In the same vein, if you put up a hollow log with seeds in the top hidden from view you can also get a shot of birds without the feeding table in the picture.
For some reason our feeding station took off with very little trying. We were both surprised. Saying that, we have chosen the foods to suit the bird population as we knew it. We were already aware of the Goldies presence & somewhere I had read that they absolutely love Niger seed. I had never heard of niger seed before & was about to order it off the internet when we saw it in a local garden centre. It was an instant hit & they were there within hours much to our surprise.
We used nuts for the tits but as for a general seed mix we only use one which the robin likes & put it on a try attachment but we do add extra mealworms . This is because the seed mix kept going mouldy in the feeder so we amended what we were offering to those birds we knew we could feed.
So I think that might be a good tip that we just fell upon. It's no use putting food out for certain birds that you are never going to get.
We now have a linnet (mentioned in different thread) and we now have spotted a Redpoll.
So we can't complain.
I might try that in my holly bush but I would have to use either meal-worms or niger seed as I tried fat balls coated with niger & no-one seemed to like them. As for the nuts the birds would not get a look in for the squirries. But I know what you mean , have a look at one of our two resident robins, I know we are talking feed stations but a natural feed station appeals to me.
A natural feeding station appeals to me too as the pictures I could get would be better than with a bird table in. The squirrels could be a problem, but getting round that with meal worms sounds like a good plan to me.
We have just bought some suet bird food especially for the robins as it was picking it out the mixed food so we are going to add a bit extra.