Hi ChifChaf, we (note the ‘we’) have a tray under one Niger feeder, not so much because of the over spill, more to give easier access to the other finch’s who are not happy grubbing around in the thick hellebores under the feeders. We have another Niger feeder that is not out at the moment, the local fields are full of Goldfinch food & we tend to deploy the 2nd Niger in mid/late winter without a tray & with open ground under. The Goldfinches grub around off the grass, we’ve seen sizable flocks of around 30 or so a few winters ago.
Both Niger or Nyjer does it for me, the seed is from the African daisy ‘Guizotia abyssinica’
Originally called niger as its from Nigeria. The name Nyjer is trademarked by the wild bird food industry.
Yes the Redpolls have arrived, haven’t seen Siskin yet
Your bandits are very well behaved. Ours chewed through the plastic tubing of the feeders completely destroying them and it took us a long time to configure the type of baffles, length of chains and the size of the feeders to keep them away.
In the absence of being able to get out / travel much due to various lock downs I wondered if anyone has any good ideas for live web cam links, I guess it’s possible now to travel the world and various time zones and see what’s about at least
Found this one in Panama but any suggestions welcome.
Highlights of this feeder are available on you- tube it seems
We saw our first Brent Geese yesterday. They love Chichester Harbour for the winter and in a while there will be thousands of them. They are great to watch in the evening as they fly from the fields back to the water. Lovely birds.
We get Thousands of Pink-foots and Barnacle Geese on the Solway a little north of us. Take a trip to Norfolk in winter normally to see the Brent’s, always a treat. Hope the numbers hold up for you this year
Took down both feeders and washed them towards the cold season. The shorter tubes under baffles become out of reach for the squirrels who stand in line on the ground for food stamps. I extended some of the perches with short pipe sections to enable larger birds like cardinals to land and balance on the feeders. When I fill them I always throw some seeds on the ground for the mourning doves, the chipmunks and especially for the wild turkey who visits us once in a while.
Hello Haim
Glad to see feeder cleaning. So many people mean well but never clean their feeders. In the UK we lost a huge proportion of our Greenfinch’s due primarily to a disease spread via bird feeders !
The biggest threat to the birds in our yard are the well fed neighbor’s cats who show up regularly to hunt. This is why I cheer for the larger predators, the coyotes and foxes, when they arrive, giving the cats some of their own medicine.
Shocked me for 1sec because a bird caused a loud bang and blew a fuse on the transformer at the end of the street and took out one side of the street. Thought this look like power lines for a second.
Yes indeed, a Black Redstart, rare as hens teeth, uber envious. We’re about s are you located?
As there are fewer than 100 breeding pairs in the UK, its on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern & listed as a Schedule 1 species on The Wildlife and Countryside Act.
