Quorn Wildlife News - Attracting Birds to our Gardens

by Peter Gamble

To attract birds into our gardens and close to our homes can be a very rewarding experience which can teach us a great deal about our local birds whilst at the same time being very pleasurable. A wide variety of food in the shape of peanuts, mixed grain, sunflower seeds, etc. is readily available these days in local shops and these can be varied and supplemented with other concoctions of our own making as we learn more about the preferences of individual species.

However, it is necessary to emphasise several important points. Firstly, if you have a cat, or cats, it is best not to feed birds at all, and certainly not on the ground, as gardens enclosed within walls and fences are dangerous places where birds can be easily trapped and killed; cats take an enormous toll of birds in garden situations, far more than any other predator. Secondly make your food containers as squirrel proof as possible otherwise any good you might do in sustaining local bird populations through the winter will be offset by the damage done to them during the breeding season by the Gray Squirrel from which few nests are safe.

Grey Squirrel numbers are being kept much too high at present because of the abundance of food put out for birds - available to them during the winter months. Since being introduced into Britain they must have had a particularly damaging effect on most of our woodland birds.

In Quorn peanuts can be expected to attract plenty of tit species with the Great and Blue Tits the most plentiful, but also if you have coniferous trees nearby. the little Coal Tit, white naped with a black cap and triangular black bib; these spend much time carrying off nuts and seed and burying them. flying to and from with great industry, and doing the same with wild fruits thereby ensuring that future generations of their kind will inherit a world with plenty of suitable food sources.

Two other small, rather drab, black capped species can be expected from time to time, the Marsh and the Willow Tit, the former favouring mature deciduous woodland and the latter hedgerows and scrub; both species are very partial to Sunflower and Burdock seeds. During recent years the delightful little Long-tailed Tit has adopted the habit of feeding at peanut carriers and being sociable by nature feed quite happily side by side, sometimes half a dozen clustered around one container - very different from the territorial behaviour exhibited by most other species.

In Quorn we are fortunate in having quite a good population of Nuthatch, distinctive stout necked birds with heavy beaks. bluegrey upperparts and chestnut flanks and highly adapted to a life in trees. Many parishes away from the Charnwood Forest do not have any of these birds which in our parish can be found on and around the Quorn House Estate and in the Quorn Mills Park/ St. Bartholomew's Parish Churchyard area. Anyone living in the vicinity of these places can expect to have visits from this striking bird. They are large dominant birds which tend to carry the nuts or other seed away sometimes wedging it into the rough bark of a nearby oak or sometimes burying it to return quickly for more.

Up to 20 other species can be expected to visit bird tables and hanging nuts from time to time, especially during hard weather. Some of these are from distant lands, like the Siskin and Fieldfare, and the Blackcap which used to only occur as a summer visitor, but is now a regular winter visitor. The Blackcap feeds on a variety of food scraps, but is particularly fond of Ivy and Honeysuckle berries. Whereas the Blackcaps which visit us in the summer come from southern Europe and North Africa, it has been found that those that spend the winter here come from Austria and Eastern Germany.

Observing the birds in gardens is full of surprises and a never ending source of pleasure.