Keeping bird food on bird tables when the wind is gale force and howling is impossible - Over the past few days I have watched helplessley as the minute I put the bird food out it blew away like dust through the bird feeder port holes and off bird tables. When my usual garden birds finally arrived for their daily visit at my feeders they started pecking frantically on empty bird tables.
I’d just been reminded that birds often fly miles to bird tables when they know there is a reliable source of energy for them in a particular garden. They use all their energy flying to the bird table (my bird table) and if my bird table is empty - well in winter that would be bad.
I tried to sort the problem out by moving the bird table and the hanging bird feeders to a less windy place and believe me moving a bird table with wind howling round isn’t recommended.
My garden birds don’t seem to be the brightest bunch of birds because it takes them about two weeks to find a new bird feeder position (except for the ground feeder which they found in a day).
Watching these stupid, hungry birds flying round the empty area where the bird feeders are usually placed was annoying. The time I’d spent trying to help them by moving the bird table had been a waste of my time and I’d got cold and wet doing it.
Sparrows, blue tits, coal tits, chaffinches were some of the birds that came to my bird feeders when the bird feeders were bare. They never did find the feeders and bird table after I had moved them to less windy places even though I hadn’t moved them far!
But I have found the answer of how to keep bird food on a bird table during a gale. It’s so simple.
The answer is -
- melt lard in a frying pan and
- pour the lard over any type of bird food which has been placed in an old metal container.
- Mix the melted lard and the bird seed together. Let the lard set round the bird seed. Don’t bother making it into fat balls.
- Put chunks and chunks of this heavy, set mixture on the bird tables and
- keep the bird tables topped up all day with this mixture as the hanging bird feeders may be out of action due to the wind
I know it sounds like a fat ball, but it’s not.
The lard coats the bird seed and makes it into a block which is softer than a fat ball. This has five good points -
- Obviously it’s good because it stops the bird food blowing away
- It gives the birds much needed fat in a winters day
- It only takes a minute to do. Melt fat then pour over bird food.
- There is no need to measure. It’s easy to tell when there is enough fat coating the bird seed
- Any bird food can be used. I put a general mixture and included peanuts but there is other bird food you can use
Two more of my diary notes about birds surving the elements -
How do birds survive in bad weather?
Bird watch Survey weekend - the birds haven’t appeared this morning because of the bad weather
So there you have it my answer to an annoying bird feeding problem. Anyone else have any other ideas?
Tags: bird-table, bird_feeder, gale_force, source_of_energy
