Saturday 15 February 2014

Number 6 update



Not much action here. A Well Worth It £2.99 bird-feeder swinging around in the rain. There are no birds around, and even if there were it would take a very skilful cross-wind landing to get on the feeder in these conditions. I have also been informed, by someone who knows, that the feeder is 'rubbish'. Birds like metal feeders, apparently, but not as much as they like fat balls. I'll have another crack when the weather's less mental, as no one wants to see fat balls swinging in the wind out of their kitchen window. The only other thing I've learned from this one so far is that a 'nuthatch' is in fact a bird, not part of the feeder.

... right, next day, and we've upgraded the feeder, the sun has come out, and we have our first customer! It's Fat Alan the greedy woodpigeon, who's been hoovering up spilled seeds for the last 45 minutes.


Good job he hasn't yet learnt to land on the feeder, as he'd probably bring down the bush it's attached to. The photo captures him waddling off to Greggs for a couple of pasties. We saw a feeder in action outside a cafe this morning, with a queue of delicate and colourful little birds waiting to land and nibble. That's more what I had in mind, but will make do with Alan for now.

4 comments:

Molly Potter said...

I put out a bird feeder in 2012 and watched (no monitored - I have a background in science) it for a few months. Nothing happened. I lost heart (scientifically) until someone told me the glass/plastic ones were not liked by birds (this is clearly well-understood bird wisdom for those in the bird 'in' crowd. (I don't resent them, I just think they could share with us less -bird-worldly more)). And then I forgot all things bird because it was summer and they were tweeting loudly outside my bedroom window -and I did not want to fuel their noisiness and I was a tad irritated by their bright-and-brezzy birdliness, if I am honest. And then a week ago (inspired by your post) I looked at the plastic (£1 from Poundland actually) bird-feeder and saw that it had been emptied. My suspicion is that Alan is IT savvy and retrospectively able and is now living in Norwich and even more fat.

Molly Potter said...

Breezy. I knew that. I am not stupid.

jim_greenan said...

He has a cousin there. What did Bill Oddie say about the feeder?

Molly Potter said...

I told Bill Oddie that I wasn't at all interested in all that bird stuff and I only liked him as a Goody. Consequently there was not a single bit of bird-feeder wisdom shared.