Looks like some pesky rodent has wasted his time trying to get into my bird feeder. I think the scalloped edge might look quite attractive when he's finished.
I have observed that my local cohort of tits and sparrows are an ungrateful bunch of bar stewards. My replacement bags of sunflower hearts aren't due for a couple of days so I thought I'd finish off a bag of no grow mix. I've watched them chucking out anything they don't fancy - which is most of it. As the feeder is near the house I've had to try and sweep up the rejects so as not to attract mice. Very difficult as the feeder is above soil. I've emptied the feeder down the end of the garden and they can wait until tomorrow for what's left of the sunflower hearts😡
I've tried various makes/mixes and I'm so fed up with a thick carpet of small round cream and pale brown seeds (dari? millet?) thrown out of the feeders and not eaten even by pigeons or other ground feeders, I'm going to try the no mess feed from Peckamix. At least the squirrel baffles on the poles work though they still try occasionally. Oddly, though peanuts are visited they don't seem to be popular this year.
I've been watching my feeder visitors and have noticed the different ways that they take the sunflower hearts. Whereas the tits take one and fly into the bushes with it, the black caps take about half a dozen. My question is: where on earth do they put them? Do they swallow them while or do they fill their mouth with them and go off somewhere to chew them?
Supplementary question has occurred to me. Is it called chewing if there's no teeth involved?
Some birds have a crop, basically an expandable throat pouch, where they can store and soften food. Wood pigeons are a good example and you can see their throat getting fatter as they eat. Other birds just have a big gob I think. Some foods can be swallowed whole and are broken in the bird's gizzard which is like a pre-stomach filled with gravel that grinds food as they move about. The gizzard makes sure indigestible parts of the food are regurgitated as a pellet which saves the poor bird filling its stomach with stuff that will take more energy to digest than it provides. Larger birds can rely on their gizzard more but smaller birds still need to de-shell and break up tough food as much as they can. This is why sunflower hearts are better in winter as the small birds don't have to waste so much energy getting the shell off and they can make more of their limited time on the feeders.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
My sister advised me to chop the peanuts up to make it easier and quicker for small birds to eat this cold weather so I duly got the vegetable/food mixer thingy out of the cupboard and chopped like mad, refilled the feeder and.......zilch, no interest at all.
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Well - it keeps you off the streets @B3. Which is the norm for now anyway
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Looks like some pesky rodent has wasted his time trying to get into my bird feeder.
I think the scalloped edge might look quite attractive when he's finished.
My replacement bags of sunflower hearts aren't due for a couple of days so I thought I'd finish off a bag of no grow mix. I've watched them chucking out anything they don't fancy - which is most of it. As the feeder is near the house I've had to try and sweep up the rejects so as not to attract mice. Very difficult as the feeder is above soil.
I've emptied the feeder down the end of the garden and they can wait until tomorrow for what's left of the sunflower hearts😡
Whereas the tits take one and fly into the bushes with it, the black caps take about half a dozen. My question is: where on earth do they put them? Do they swallow them while or do they fill their mouth with them and go off somewhere to chew them?
Supplementary question has occurred to me. Is it called chewing if there's no teeth involved?