Birds in the garden — bird feeders & winter feeding

photo:www.thisismoney.co.uk

We are so accustomed to the usual blue Tits and goldfinches that don't even notice them – but their bright plumage would be appropriate and in the rainforest. In our area live emerald greenfinches, red-breasted bullfinches, soft pink with chocolate headboards waxwings... Birds – colored frames on black-and-white film the Russian winter, fresh flowers in the snow. But for them to bloom in your garden, you will have to make some effort.

It was such a wonderful writer Yevgeny Nosov. When he died, found on the table a sheet of paper with the last words: "Feed the birds!" In Russia, by the way, always fed. Fabulist Ivan Andreevich Krylov, say, spend days lying on the broad windowsill of the library and crumbled bread to the pigeons. And in many estates of the landed entire rooms were provided for wintering birds, which tended to produce spring free.
 
If you want to attract birds in your garden, prepare them a coveted treat in the hungry winter birds really need it. So let's start with the feeders.



It can be a decorative wooden house elegant shape. Or plain paper package from under milk with a slotted window, which is filled with a handful of sunflower seeds. Other designs and options: suspended on strings slices of bacon (for blue Tits); seeds and bread crumbs, oiled and put on open box boards; upside down the bottle opening and bottle with sunflower or watermelon seeds.

If there is no time to bother with the feeder just hang over the window an empty cardboard box with slotted hole. If you do come make a bird feeder – keep in mind that the distance between the table and a roof should be no more than 8 cm Otherwise treat stolen pigeons and crows, small birds do not get it.

Good for winter feeding grain mix for parrots and Canaries, containing millet, hemp, and Canary seed. On this menu, the birds flew from all around.

However, it is not going to melt and relax – make a stern warning. Starving in the winter, not only birds, but cats from the neighborhood who will quickly calculate all your feeders and will open the season of winter hunting. That's why bird feeders need to hang up on a long and not too thick the branches. Or resort to some simple tricks. The most reliable way is to set the trough at a sufficiently high pole, on which is worn a wide in the middle (45-50 cm from the trunk to the edge of) a circle out of plywood. The tool is simple and effective: even a very clever and clingy cat will not be able to crawl through this obstacle.



If in winter you are rarely in the garden and can't regularly fill the feeders -- plant trees and shrubs on which the birds will have something to eat.

Solid bullfinches prefer ash, seeds lionfish which is their favorite dish. Deftly wielding a thick blunt beak, bullfinches eat the kernel and spit out a blank "blade". Just don't confuse real ash ash maple-negundo, tree-weed, filling our cities. They are easy to distinguish in the form of a winged seed. This ash it is straight, narrow and flat like a paddle and nekundi broad and curved, like all maples. Objev to the base of the brush dry ash seeds, the switch bullfinches on Rowan. Some ornithologists think that Breasts of the bullfinch are painted in red color due to the carotene contained in the berries of the mountain ash. It really is a moot point, the attentive observer will immediately notice that birds only bite the seeds, throwing snow red flesh and skin.

Happy to eat the berries red ash waxwings. Flocks of these cute fluffy birds able to eat off all the ash in the area. Plant more mountain ash trees in my garden (by the way, ash looks great in fruit plantings when one pit is placed five, ten, or even fifteen seedlings) and at the end of winter, waking up from a melodic overflow-chime, you will see a flock of waxwings, clinging to the snow-covered branches. If the red ash is not ugly, waxwings are happy pecking the berries of Aronia – chokeberry – or small apples of Paradise.



When you feed birds from year to year, they get used to people and become more and more gullible than. Often come to the feeder, stand still, watch them, each time reducing the distance. One morning, when the birds discover the feeder empty, pull on the palm of a handful of sunflower seeds. Keep an outstretched hand as high as possible and remove the face, so the birds did not see your eyes. Very soon the most desperate (probably tit-blue Tits) swoop down from a nearby Bush, grab a seed and will take on a high branch to snatch safe... it Will take a little time, and your palm will sparknot other regulars – great Tits and nuthatches. Then you will understand what is the meaning invested in the old expression "feed the birds."

In many cities and towns there are fed by the places where birds and squirrels without fear take the Goodies out of the hands of anyone, even a complete stranger. In Moscow's Main Botanical gardens, and fun. Buy in the nearest market package of sunflower seeds (not roasted!) and feed cold birds. The therapeutic effect of this procedure is fantastic: there will be no prolonged winter depression...

Source: www.supersadovnik.ru/article_plot.aspx?id=1001576