I always had no problem attracting birds to the garden with seed mix and black sunflower seed, then my neighbour put sunflower hearts in his and my garden became a bird free zone? So the only solution was to match my neighbour. I have 2 nyjer feeders, 1 nut feeder and 5 large seed feeders. The birds now love it but my wallet doesn't!
One of my recent 'tricks' (I've no doubt that others do it, so I don't claim any great innovation) is to get a bag of cheap (the cheapest I can find) apples from the supermarket. I then quarter or halve them, depending on size, & scatter them around the feeding pole. In about 6 weeks of doing this I've regularly had mistle thrush; song thrush; and blackbirds feeding on the apples - no fieldfares or redwings yet, but I live in hope. I was quite pleased with the thrush family visitors until a cheeky grey squirrel ran off with half an apple & sat on a nearby fence munching away on his prize.
I have two hanging feeders with sunflower hearts and one with niger seed. On the ground I have a ground feeding tray with a cage around it. At the moment I get a goldfinch early in the morning on one of the sunflower feeders and an occasional robin. Last spring I was getting siskin, redpol, bullfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch etc. Hopefully things will get better soon.
Why do I allow myself to be seduced by proprietary bird seed? 'All year round', 'No mess', etc. If I put out sunflower hearts or niger (nyger? nyjer?) seed my feeders are alive with action but once I change to other varieties the garden becomes a bird-free zone. What's your experience?
