Hobbies Other Than Caving

[mikem]

Maybe you should get Darren to scare them off  :-\

 

[Fulk]

A few of our feathered friends:

 

[Laurie]

We've lots of greater spotted woodpeckers round here. The little swines are costing me a fortune in peanuts - there were three of them on the feeder the other day. I'm also feeding a bloody great big heron with the goldfish in our pond.

I've got loads of adult and fledgling GS Woodpeckers. We've been feeding them peanuts for 40 years.

 

[PeteHall]

I'm also feeding a bloody great big heron with the goldfish in our pond.

I drained our pond down at the start of lockdown and caught all the goldfish to take them to the pond at work where they won't eat my tadpoles, newts, dragonfly larva etc. I left them in a big bucket overnight and when I released them at work found three of the four big ones had disappeared! 

How the hell the heron knew to look in a bucket of water, I don't know!

 

[tony from suffolk]

We've lots of greater spotted woodpeckers round here. The little swines are costing me a fortune in peanuts - there were three of them on the feeder the other day. I'm also feeding a bloody great big heron with the goldfish in our pond.

I've got loads of adult and fledgling GS Woodpeckers. We've been feeding them peanuts for 40 years.

I confess I didn't know they could live that long Laurie.

 

[mikem]

They don't, the oldest recorded great spot was 11.

 

[tony from suffolk]

It was a joke...

 

[mikem]

That's what emojis are for

(Cockatoos & macaws have lived to be over 100 - in captivity & not in bird years!)

 

[tony from suffolk]

Me no likey emojis.

 

[Fulk]

Don't you mean:

'Me no likey emojis.  :thumbsdown:    '

 

[Keris82]

A few of our feathered friends:

What seed are you using? I can't get Finches to come down to mine

 

[Fulk]

We put out sunflower seeds, which attract bullfinches, greenfinches, goldfinches and chaffinches ? along with robins, sparrows, blackbirds, starlings and assorted tits.

 

[Judi Durber]

Use the Sunflower hearts.

The Niger seeds the birds leave now, they are getting picky.  I am lucky enough to buy the bags direct from the farm.

I find where you put the feeders is important. For Goldfinches the 2 feeders at the top of the tree get eaten first then the one in the middle but the one hung out on the edge of the tree they only go to if there is nothing else.  The ones hung in the middle of the garden they don't go to at all (Too exposed I guess.).  The sparrows don't mind where they are. 
My big problem is the Crows have found the fat balls in the middle of the garden and can destroy 5 balls in one sitting 

There is a great Springwatch clip on who is king of the bird feeders.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08fqgwj

 

[Roger W]

We have crows about (and magpies) but they don't seem to come near the feeder.  Starlings by the dozen can empty it in minutes when we fill it with suet nibbles!  And the odd collared dove comes looking around the lawn for anything that has been dropped.  At the moment we have lots of sparrows and we're putting mixed seed in the feeder.  It goes pretty quickly.

 

[Fulk]

Miranda was gob-smacked the other day when she saw a hen harrier suddnly swoop down into our (small) front garden.

 

[mikem]

That would normally be a female sparrowhawk

 

[Fulk]

Errr . . . sorry, I meant sparrowhawk  :-[. (but not a hobby other than caving).

 

[Roger W]

A Hobby (other than caving)...

 

[mikem]

The one that subbuteo was named after...

 

[Alex]

No such thing. (Hobby other than caving).