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Feeding your birds
Tasty grub for attracting birds to your garden!
Cockney wide boy Fred Avery looks at popular food to leave out for your garden birds through the cold lean winter months:
The question I’m often asked, yeah, is what kind of grub do I feed me birds wiv. Well, most garden birds really ain’t that fussy, but it’s always a good idea to surprise them every now and again.
In winter you can leave out peanuts, mushy fruit, porridge oats, breadcrumbs and seeds. If you have a wren in your garden, you can sprinkle some grated cheese for the little darlings. Make sure it’s not too strong though and none of that mongin blue French stuff, as you don’t want to kill em!
Another all round favourite is suet or animal fat. You can pick this up for free round your local butcher shop, while you’re in getting the Sunday roast. Just string a lump of suet off a branch in your garden and you’ll be Mr. Popular wiv all the little birdies for miles around.
Bird cake supreme
Now if you really want to impress your birds you’ve got to go that extra mile and make an effort roight. First you need your cake base yeah? Used yoghurt cartons or egg cartons will do, but the upturned lid of a coffee jar is my personal favourite.
Second, get some animal fat or suet and melt into an old pan at a medium temperature. Then, gather your cake mix together - bread crumbs, seeds, oat flakes, cake scraps and raisins an’ that. Pour your melted suet over your mix and leave to set. Best to make enough to go round. This is even tastier if you add sultanas, crushed peanuts or even left over grated cheese. Soon as your garden birds see the effort you’ve made, they’ll be practically eating out of your hands, you mark my words maite!
Attracting foreign birds
Now is the ideal time to be really making an effort. With the number of migratory birds to Ireland up by 2% to 15% you stand a sporting chance of attracting new and perhaps even exotic birds to your garden.
One lucky house owner in Dublin, according to the geezers at Bird Watch Ireland, reported a whopping 46 different species of birds in their garden, all in the one evening. These included rare and colourful varieties rarely spotted in Ireland before. Now who says you can’t have your cake and eat it?
Sometimes, when I’m down in me local boozer, meeting wiv me Oirish mates and catching Deirdry the barmaid’s eye an’ that, some silly bugger will pipe up and say “Hey Fred, you still baking cakes for birds these days? You’ll be out knitting sweaters for them soon!”
Mock they very well may, but the real benefits of feeding your garden birds over the cold winter months are sure to pass once spring comes round. I used to wake to the sound of a horrible alarm clock. Now I wake to the lovely voice of a song thrush or red-breasted robin singing sweetly outside my bedroom window.
It’s the simple pleasures in life that bring a warm feeling to me heart. Bless all the little birdies everywhere this winter. Now get up off your backsides and give ‘em a hand out!
By Fred Avery
