Kitchen Garden Forum

I made another batch of bird cakes today: 3 packets of Atora suet and 1/3 packet of lard, all melted and mixed with milled peanuts, mealworms and sunflower hearts, much appreciated by woodpecker, long-tailed tit, goldcrest and starlings!

I envy anybody with fieldfares, redwings and bramblings in their gardens because we have not seen any of them this winter, quite unusual with the harsh conditions in Scandinavia.

My friend has a Red Sentinel crab apple tree in her garden which has been looking lovely all winter so far with hundreds of small to medium bright red apples like Christmas baubles. A flock of about 30 Fieldfare have spotted it and been feasting for the past two days just a few yards from the window. I hope it has helped sustain them for a bit longer. I've added it to my to buy list and just have to decide where to plant it now. I can recommend it to anyone wanting a small ornamental tree.

Do those crab apples actually survive OK on the tree in frosty weather.?
I pass by a tree like this on my walk to the village and after a couple of frosty nights I noted that while the fruits still remained on the tree, they had all turned brown, mushy and rotten and would have been totally inedible for wildlife.

The ones on her tree look lovely all winter and this is the first year they've all been eaten apart from a few nibbled by blackbirds. They do look a bit past it when they fall off in spring though.

We have a large crab apple tree opposite our house which I actually grew about 25 years ago from a pip found in a hedgerow crab apple at the other end of the village. Every year it has a huge crop of fruit but they all drop off about November and all the blackbirds and thrushes feed themselves silly. I wish the crab apples would stay on longer, then we might get fieldfares and redwings (or even waxwings!).
An extra avian visitor today was a wood pigeon.

Also supply the birds with fresh water.

In the past few days I,ve notice a small flock of about 6 bluetits coming to our bird feeders which have been relatively unviaited during the recent summer heat. I suspect they,re a late newly hatched flock so will need to build up their strength before winter.

The bird feeders are located lmost touching a bushy magnolia stellata bush so they have somewhere to flee for cover when the sparrow hawk appears on the scene.

However the squirrels have quickly cottoned onto the fact that if they can't climb up the slippery metal pole of the bird feeder, they can just scamper up the magnlia bush and lep out from the upper branches straight onto the feeders.

Amazing how pesky rodents have such intelligence, doesn't take long for squirrels, rats & mice to figure things out.