To feed or not to feed?

[Monika]

I usually stop feeding the birds about April/May but because it was so dry and inhospitable earlier I have carried on until now and now we are getting whole families visiting the feeder (with sunflower hearts, suet granules and dried mealworms), including all the tit families, nuthatches, siskins, great spotted woodpeckers, chaffinches, greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches. Our drums of food are now running out and I am inclined to gradually reduce and then stop feeding until about October/November. My OH thinks we should carry on - any thoughts?

[Nature's Babe]

Here is a link to the RSPB's advice Monika, it says shortages can occur at any time of year and gives guidance on what is most helpful at what time of year.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbi ... ofeed.aspx

[PLUMPUDDING]

I feed them all year round. It can be quite expensive especially mid-winter when there is not much other food and now when, as you say, they are turning up with all their broods. They do tend to disperse at the end of summer for a while, but if we are encouraging them to have larger broods by providing food at the start of the year, then we didn't really ought to stop altogether when there are so many chicks needing food.

I get so much pleasure watching them that I don't resent providing sunflower hearts, fat blocks, peanuts and mixed seed. I don't put tons out, but a measured ration each morning, and when they've eaten all that they have to go and find their own for the rest of the day. The blackbirds are busy working their way through my cherries and raspberries at the moment but haven't managed to get through the nets on my strawberries and red currants. They don't seem very partial to black currants and gooseberries thank goodness, so I should harvest something.

My other thought is that if the magpies and jackdaws have a good breakfast they will leave the nests and fledglings alone for a while. It also seems to work with the woodpigeon who comes for a snack and hasn't, so far, touched my cabbages.

[Monika]

In the light of your replies, NB and PP, the RSPB advice and Geoff's lovely photos of siskins and goldfinches on another thread, I think I will carry on feeding. I will try to find another spot for the feeder, though, because I am worried that the ground below the feeder must be covered in bird poo. It's grass so I can't scrub it but I might soak it with Ark-Klens.

[Geoff]

I feed all year. The advice varies like hemlines so I tend to ignore it. I notice RSPB talk about removing fat ball remains after three weeks, there's not much left of the one a day I put out after three hours! As for removing peanuts, I wouldn't want to miss the antics of the young woodpeckers being fed and learning to feed. I use whole peanuts in wire mesh feeders. I also fill two feeders with a seed mixture every day, two nyger feeders every other day (even though they empty the one in the photo in a day) and ground / table feed a mixture of some of the seed, extra black sunflowers and kitchen crumbs and crusts.

[glallotments]

We feed all year too and as for the remark often made that the parents birds will feed the chicks the wrong food if you do this - we have a web camera in a nest box and the blue tits still fed their chicks insects and grubs despite 'artificial' food being available. It seemed that the parent birds used the bird feeders to supplement their own diet whilst foraging for food to give their young.

[PLUMPUDDING]

Providing an easy snack for often exhausted parent birds is another reason why I feed them all year round as you say Gallotments.

This week I've noticed that a lot of the blue tits and great tits have formed a creche and there are about 15 or so going round the garden looking for aphids on the plants and checking nooks and crannies on the greenhouse for spiders etc. They also descend on the feeders en masse. Safety in numbers?

[Nature's Babe]

Plumpudding yours sounds like what I call a living garden, mines like that full of spiders and creepy crawlies and various winged creatures.