53 Responses

  9. Feeders are now iced up on the outside but they still can get to the food. And I got a photo of one of my favourites – the Flicker – on it. I wonder what tomorrow will bring with the ice? 
    Thanks +Deborah Green – I was thinking the other day of the lovely bird photographs that Jean used to get and incorporate into her lovely slideshows.

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  18. Uhh! Stay safe!!
    The pheasants here gobble as well but I really cannot get "angry" with them as they are such lovely birds 🙂
    I have plans to start feeding the squirrels – there are too few places left in the danish nature for them to thrive without any help. I also need a nesting/sleeping box for them as well. This will be my first investment in 2014 🙂

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  19. Oh yes, it is so satisfying to feed them, but they do eat me out of house and home, for sure. The blue jays are the worst. They seem to just sit and gobble it down. I love it that the Northern Flickers take jabs at them with their long beaks when they see them coming. 🙂 I would much rather have the flickers, they are so gorgeous and eat up ants, so they are also useful.
    And now we have a freezing rain warning with up to 40 mm of freezing rain forecast!
    +Sofie LÞve Forsberg 

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  20. Such a beautiful sight! The birds in my garden are ruining me – they eat like 2 pounds of seeds a day…LoL 🙂 So lovely to see you are feeding them too during the hard seasons, but I conclude the season is already much harder in Canada than here. We haven't gotten any snow yet…I really long for the crisp winter air in which everything is renewed and cleansed.

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  23. Thank you very much for all those informations, also to +Steven Kennard !! But fortunately we don't have current rats!! we had them last winter, when we had snow they have built tunnels under the terrace and the flowerbed, so we had to call the exterminator and he put some poison in the tunnels. They dissapeared after a while, but he told us, to take away the birdfeeders, so we took them away and this winter we did not dare again to put again bird seed there! :o(

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  26. Thanks Sumit!
    Thank you +Karen Cooper – it was just a moment but I do wish I could have had more of the selection we get – the cardinal would have brightened it up perfectly, as well as more of the dark eyed juncos which are such pretty ones, all over the ground, small round and dark. And the mourning doves are absent in this where we usually have lots on the ground around.
    The goldfinches are drab, but it is their winter dress, so not surprising.
    And of course the squirrel there just at the moment would have completed the picture, but perhaps not be popular as he has been in the car, under the bonnet, doing who knows what damage (or maybe in the loft or walls, chewing our wires…)

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  29. Was able to save a baby bird from Thelma – the cat next door – in the summer. Not sure who was making the most noise, the baby bird, its parents, Thelma or me yelling. Utter chaos.

    There are suggestions in England to restrict domestic cat movements as there seems to be a real decline in garden and song birds due cat predation. Unfortunately, unlike dogs, cats can't be trained – hunting is after all what they do, but it is still distressing. The lovely Thelma is a real birder – and still not talking to me because I stopped her fun!

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  32. +Karen Cooper – cats are a real nuisance and we have very few outdoors now, unless the odd stray turns up. There is a bye-law in some places to stop them going out. Ours are indoor cats anyway. It`s a shame otherwise as they either kill the birds or scare them away.
    We are bothered more by birds of prey that sit in our tree and just look at the feast sitting on the different feeders. Can be horrible to see your favourite birds killed in front of your eyes. If they kill my cardinals, I would probably kill them though otherwise I love to see them (they are protected, of course, and they also have to live… but my cardinals…).

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  33. +Ursula Klepper – I asked +Steven Kennard (an expert, as he used to be in pest control with his father, early in his long career). He said to put rat poison down. Put it in a pipe (plastic drain pipe, approx 10 cm diameter or a bit larger – maybe 30-35 cms long). Put the poison in about 15 cms inside.
    He said you need to watch to see where the rats run, as they usually have preferred routes along a wall etc. When you see the route they take, just put the pipe there with nothing in it, Don`t handle the pipe much (as little as possible, don`t use scented soap before touching it, maybe use gardening gloves to handle it, just something that has no strong smell). They are intelligent creatures. Leave the pipe in place, well secured to stop it rolling around when a rat goes into it. Put nothing into it for a few days. After they have got used to it, then take a long handled spoon and put the poison inside it about 15 cm so that the birds or cats won`t be able to get to the poison.

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  35. You are so lucky – we live in an urban area with a large local cat population so bird visitors are few and far between. Our optimistically erected bird boxes have remained empty for 4 years now – I may convert them to bug houses instead :o)

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  39. Such a lovely scene! We had unfortunatly on the place we had our birdfeeder last winter then rats coming to eat the seads that fall down from the birds feeder. So we had to take them away….:-(

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  40. Thank you, like it very much, +Ellie Kennard always feed the birds, or now ask others to put the nuts and stuff on the branches.. but this sort of coat hangers and old egg container, at least it looks like it…. guess your husband made it? VERY good idea indeed, thank you again for sharing it…

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  45. Gracias +Virtud N. 
    I quite like the winter, +Alan McConnell – I lived in the South West of France for a number of years and in England for a lot more. And I missed the distinct seasons. We get the sun, too, lots in the Winter as we do in the Summer! We are on the same latitude as Bordeaux.

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