Gardens and Parks

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The cheapest nut feeder has to be a plastic mesh bag, the sort that supermarket fruit often comes in. Simply stuff it with peanuts and hang it up. I hate the bright orange of the netting but I have noticed that siskins (one of my favourite birds) show the most interest in these feeders even though they have many others (some of them scarily expensive too) to choose from. This could well become a subject for a garden experiment!

Alternatively, make a full-fat nut pudding. This animal fat-based food is made from warmed animal fat or suet, mixed with any variety of seeds, fruits, nuts or insects and left to set before being served up. It’s a great way of providing a high-energy winter diet for your birds. My favourite way to use the suet reciped is to make fat cones – see opposite – or dip teasel heads into the melted suet.

Another way to provide bird cake is to leave the mix to set in a tin that is wedged in place between three blocks screwed to your bird table. Or you can form a ball and stuff it in a handy plastic fruit net; fill an old coconut shell; or drill holes in a log and jam the fat into these. This last is a real favourite for wood peckers! This recipe is very easy to make and you can fine tune the ingredients, perhaps including some peanuts, sunflower seeds or millet, according to what the birds seem to prefer.

Take my advice

* If you have just started feeding the birds in your garden, it may take them a little while to learn about your new service. So be patient and if after a few weeks there are still no visitors, try relocating your feeding station. It may be that the birds feel just a little too exposed.

* Keep your feeders clean by washing and sterilizing them every few months and try to avoid food hanging around and becoming stale. Feeders over concrete or decking mean you can easily sweep away any spilled food, which may otherwise attract unwanted wildlife such as rats.

YOU WILL NEED

>pine cones

> string

> 250g animal suet

> 1 jar unsalted peanut butter

> plain flour

> bird seed

1 Next time you are out for a walk collect old dry pine cones in various sizes. When you get home, tie some string around the base of a few of them.

2 Take a saucepan and heat the suet slowly in it until it has melted. Add the peanut butter and mix in until it has melted too.

3 Add some flour to help thicken the mixture and then pour in plenty of small fine seeds until you have a fairly stiff mixture. Let it cool a little, continuing to stir.

4 Before the mixture sets, drop your cones into the pan and press the stodge in between the scales.

5 Leave to cool and harden and then take out to the garden to hang in a tree or on a bird table.

A bird in the hand . . . (#ulink_262e4cc9-83c8-555e-b5a1-4e3a2f4b78be)

If being close to wildlife is your goal, then it doesn’t get much closer than when it is sitting on your palm. The robin is the perfect candidate for this. Famously bold, you can train your local bird to come to your hand in as little as a week – see opposite for how you do it. If at any stage you fail, go back a step and keep trying for contact. It is worth it for both of you: your robin will get vital food of the right kind, and you will get the rare thrill of touching a wild bird.

Take my advice

* Despite what some people seem to think, you can feed your birds all year round, just be aware that large, dry food items, such as stale bread crusts and peanuts, can choke young nestlings. So in the summer, either place them in a feeder that allows the birds to only take small bits or crumble and crush the food first.

* Also, don’t panic if you have to go away and your feeders run out. The birds are used to having food resources in the wild that do the same thing. They are adaptable and will find food elsewhere until you resume feeding again.

YOU WILL NEED

>meal worms

>plastic container

>patience

1 Get your robin interested by catching its eye with a plastic container full of wriggling meal worms. Start by simply placing this tub on your regular bird table. Eventually the robin will start feeding on them.

2 Then slowly, as the days go by, move the meal worm container away from the bird table. First move it to the foot of the bird table . . .

3 . . . then move it into the middle of the lawn. Try standing out in the garden while he is feeding, progressively getting closer to him – a step or two every day. Now you can try offering the meal worm in the same tub but at arm’s length.

4 Then, when he seems quite relaxed, one day remove the tub and place the wrigglers in your palm. You should now have a hand tame robin!

Nick’s trick

Different robins have I different tolerance levels so there are no rules to how long getting to within arm’s length will take. Just be patient. Keeping low or even lying down all help.

Take it further

Meal worms are the wriggly larvae of various beetles and can be bought in many pet shops, especially those that deal with reptiles and amphibians. They are really easy to culture in a box in your airing cupboard. All you need is a well-ventilated box with a tight-fitting lid; you can feed the worms on oatmeal, bread, biscuits and the like. Feeding meal worms to the birds is a little trickier, though, as the worms thoughtlessly have a tendency to crawl off, something a peanut most definitely cannot do. Overcome this by serving them up in slippery sided containers – but watch out for rain.

Making a simple bird table (#ulink_f40ebe4a-d0da-5c6e-8410-5fd4a5d7629c)

Go to any garden centre and take a look at the bird tables that are available. You can get them with balconies, balustrades, porches, even thatched roofs and chimneys. Some even come with a nest box upstairs! Personally, I think that some of them are just too ornate and in my experience, although they can all work to a greater or lesser degree, they fall short of actually providing what the birds want and need, which is a nice stable, spacious platform that is easy to keep clean.

Bird will eat off pretty much anything and, as with all things to do with wildlife, there are no hard and fast rules, so you can experiment. To get you started, here is a very simple and effective step-by-step project to build a bird table.

YOU WILL NEED

>35 x 50cm piece of marine or exterior quality plywood, a minimum of 1cm thick

> 130 x 1 x 1cm batten cut into two 25cm lengths and two 40cm lengths

> 2cm galvanized wood screws

>Phillips screwdriver

> Water-based wood preservative and paintbrush (optional)

> 4 cup hooks

> 1.8m wooden post with a flat top and a sharp end

> 4 angle brackets

1 The piece of plywood is the feeding platform and to this you need to attach the edging strips, two of which are a little shorter than the shorter sides of the plywood to give you gaps in the corners for making it easier to sweep clean. They also allow rainwater to drain off.

2 Screw the edging strips to the board. Use at least two screws on each short strip and three on the longer edges. At this stage, you can paint and protect the bird table with a water-based preservative, which will stop the wood rotting.

3 Now attach your table to the post using the angle brackets, screwing the brackets to the post first.

4 Screw the brackets to the bottom of the feeding platform. You could also attach some hooks to the post and to the corners on the underside of the table to hang seed feeders and bird cakes from. Choose the location for your bird table and drive your post into the ground as far as it will go, with a minimum of 40cm under the ground’s surface. You can now coat this with wood preservative too.

Make a deluxe bird bath (#ulink_77b58c2d-b7cd-5dbf-83ed-b8d897ea6700)

It’s good to provide water for your birds near the feeders. Let’s face it, would you want to eat buckets full of cereal or crisps without a drink to wash it all down? Birds will not only want to drink regularly but they also need to wash and keep their feathers clean.

The best way of providing water is an old tray, dish or dustbin lid filled with water. Pop a rock or a branch in it so your visitors have somewhere to perch too. In the winter it is even more vital to provide water, but you must make sure the water doesn’t freeze over. Break up any ice that forms as soon as possible. Alternatively, make this handsome bird bath with just a few ingredients.

When you first turn over your bird bath there may be bits of cabbage stuck in it. Either cut them out with scissors or let nature take its course and they will soon shrivel up and die.

YOU WILL NEED

> a board

> 5kg bag grit sand

> big cabbage

> 5kg bag ready-mix cement

> water

> an old bucket

> stick

> rubber gloves

> polythene sheet (or plastic bag)

1 First tip out the sand onto the board and make a mound out of it. The mound represents the depth and the size of your bird bath, so use your imagination.

2 Now cut the leaves off your cabbage, keeping them whole. Place them over the sand mound with their stems meeting in the middle.

3 Empty the bag of cement into the bucket and add water according to the instructions on the bag. Stir it thoroughly with a strong stick.

4 Pour the cement mix onto the top of the cabbage leaves and then, wearing the rubber gloves, spread it over the mound to a depth of at least 3cm.

5 Make sure the cabbage leaves, and any sand that is showing through the leaves, are well covered with the cement. Then smooth the top of the cement to a round or flat shape, depending on what you’re going to stand the bird bath on when it’s finished.