why have the birds stopped using my garden?

[ozboz]

I have a feeding station in my garden.. But no birds! The food goes off and very little is eaten. I see birds flitting past my garden but the very very rarely stop. I do have a cat but she is very old. Birds used to visit but for the last 2 years it has been so quiet, apart from starling who swoop and consume the fat balls in seconds! Any ideas

[madasafish]

You may have visiting hawks. We have intermittent visits from peregrine falcons, merlins and goshawks...preying on pigeons, collared doves and smaller birds. (feathers leave evidence).
After a visit, the bird population gets very very scared and hides at any shadow in the sky.


( I was painting a garage door one summer and a peregrine falcon carrying a pigeon crashed into the next garage door.. and stood there looking at me. The pigeon flew away. The falcon was not pleased!)

[Monika]

ozboz, what are you feeding them? Birds seem to have gone off peanuts, the preferred bird food for many years. We now only feed sunflower hearts and suet in metal mesh feeders and minced peanuts and sunflower hearts on the ground - this has resulted in all the birds coming back!
Sunflower hearts are more expensive than black sunflowers but much less wasteful and don't make a mess either. Mixed seeds are a bit iffy, too, so often the bulk of it stays behind, goes mouldy or just attracts rats or pigeons ("flying rats").

[oldherbaceous]

Evening Ozboz, another thought, i was wondering if your feeding station is out in the open, birds do like to be able to feed by hopping back and forth from bushes to the feeders.
And if someone near by has this set up, the birds will feed there first every-time.

[Suzie]

We have given up on putting out peanuts, the darlings just don't seem to want to eat them! I fear they are getting picky

But as OH says, a lot depends on where your feeders are? The birds need to feel that they can escape and take cover very quickly if needs be

[glallotments]

We have hanging feeders with seed mixtures ( you need one that isn't flaky as that is messy)and another with black sunflower seeds that the birds seem to love. But we also buy some of the seed mixtures that mail order companies supply - Haiths do one called Golden chorus which they can't resist - some is popped on the ground feeding table - but maybe not ideal when you have a cat and some on the ordinary bird table. Any left on the ground station is eaten by hedgehogs later in the day. I also make bird cake - home made fat balls which aren't ball shaped but moulded in yoghurt cartons.

We find the blacbirds like to take cover under shrubs where they rummage about - during the snow it was also an area where the ground was clear. As others have said the birds like cover nearby in the form of trees or shrubs.

A supply of water is also attractive but needs to be kept topped up.

As others have found the peanuts are less popular.

[Primrose]

My thoughts are either sparrowhawks, your bird table is too exposed or if you're feeding peanuts, they could be stale.
We get the occasional sparrow hawk in our garden and I can tell you, the garden goes awfully quiet for a while after one of their visits, even if they don't succeed in catching anything.

I've also relocated our bird table away from the patio and repositioned it close to a Magnolia bush which provides much better cover for the birds. They seem to be much more at ease using it there.

We use a lot of peanuts and buy in bulk but the quality of some of them is often quite poor, and very dried out. To combat this we now grind some of them up in a food processor, mix in with other bird seed and put on the bird table. Treated like this they all get eaten whereas otherwise they just rotted in the peanut feeders.

[Johnboy]

Hi Ozboz,
First off you do not say in which part of the country that you live which would be of great assistance when trying to sort many things out.
I do not think that it is a food thing. During the winter months birds congregate around sources of food but when it comes to the breeding season all things change and the birds pair and find a nesting place.
This means that the birds disperse over a very wide area and as the supply of natural food becomes more widely available they will visit your feeding station less and less.
In my own case the decrease in the Tit population is very marked due to the harsh winter in this part of the country.
I am very pleased to say that the population of Goldcrests has largely survived as there were a small flock of 10 flitting round one of the large Yew trees on my property earlier today where they have nested for at least the last 30 years. I have yet to see a Wren since the bad winter days when I had a Wren roost of 16 die in one night.
I have a pair of Yellow Hammers singing to me daily from the power lines about 100yds away from the house. There is generally another pair about 100 yards the other way but they are not in evidence at present.
The Tits are still taking Peanuts but due to the decrease in population they are not taking so many nuts.
I have a very large property land wise and about a mile of hedgerow of many species of tree.
JB.

[peter]

JB, I had a pair of Wrens flitting about my raspberries on the allotment this weekend.