Blimey It’s Only the First

Sunday was the first day of autumn and it’s started as though it means business. It was cold with a gale force wind. A gust of 24mph was our strongest since 24 May 2013.

Through much of August our regular gardens birds seemed a little bit scarce but over the last few days they have returned in large numbers. They are managing to get through 500gms of standard bird seed, as well as tucking into golden chorus, peanuts, niger seed, black sunflowers, sunflower hearts, suet pellets, and fat balls.

By the middle of the afternoon this feeder filled mid morning is just about empty as this sparrow being blown about in the wind has found out. The black sunflower seeds do last a little longer as the sparrows leave these alone once the ordinary mixed seed feeder is empty.

As you can see there are still plenty of black sunflower seeds left for this young greenfinch to tuck into even though the sparrow’s feeder is empty. Fat balls have been put on ration. A mixture of sparrows, starlings, blue tits, great tits and the occasional long tailed tits can go through a container full of 8 fat balls in less than a day. Finally they manage to empty the bird bath several times a day and that’s refilled on a regular basis.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett