Winter is always a challenging time for our garden birds, but a few simple measures can make a real difference to their survival. . .
Here’s some top tips:
Food
1 – Be consistent with feeding. Birds come to rely on the food you provide, so stopping suddenly can be harmful.
2 – Provide high-energy food such as sunflower hearts, suet-based feeds, peanuts, mealworms and oil-rich seed mixes.
3 – Place feeders at different heights to appeal to each species.
Water
1 – Birds need to drink and bathe daily, so always make sure that water is available.
2 – Use a bird bath and freshen-up every day.
3 – Prevent water freezing by floating a ping-pong ball in the bath.
4 – Never add salt or chemicals to keep the ice at bay.
Natural shelter
1 – Leave evergreen shrubs such as holly, ivy and conifers for handy roosting sites.
2 – Position a nesting box in a sheltered spot to give small birds a safe refuge at night.
Natural resources
1 – Grow and leave shrubs such as hawthorn, holly and rowan for their handy berries.
2 – Leave seed heads on perennials such as teasel and sunflower.
3 – Fruit trees provide handy windfall fruit, which is particularly valuable during winter.
Keep things a little ruffled
1 – Leave some patches of long grass for insects which wrens and robins love.
2 – Log piles attract invertebrates which woodpeckers will tuck into throughout the year.
Provide nesting and roosting spots
1 – Put up a bird box now as many birds will use them for shelter before spring nesting.
Put safety first
1 – Site feeders and bird baths away from areas where cats can hide.
2 – Prevent disease by cleaning feeders and baths on a regular basis.
3 – Avoid pesticides as they hit a bird’s vital insect supplies.
Mix it up
1 – Appeal to a variety of birds by introducing different feeding set-ups.
2 – Hang feeders for tits and finches.
3 – Starlings love fat balls and suet blocks, so put them out in a cage.
4 – Use ground feeding trays for robins and blackbirds.