It looks as if Granny-Anne has beaten me to it again! She posted about feeding the birds while I was just thinking about it!
Yes, we started feeding the birds at the end of October, using the rather posh feeder which was a gift from our daughter, Jennie, some months ago.
I must admit that, at first, I was a bit worried that this large, shiny feeder would frighten the birds away. So I hung it out in the garden a couple of months ago to give the birds time to get used to it. It was empty then because I understand that it is not good to feed birds in the summer. I filled it a week ago and only then did I notice a complete absence of birds in our garden. Not one would appear in a space of 10-15 minutes. This was odd.
This seemed so unusual that I contacted the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds via Twitter (yes, I know, how appropriate! But Granny-Anne has used a variation of that one already!) and they replied that it is not unusual for birds to disperse after the young have left the nest.
Nothing happened at the feeder for a few days, until the first visitor that I saw was a Coal Tit, a brave little adventurer who stopped for a quick snack to break his journey. Soon after there was a Robin, then a Blue Tit, then a little gang of House Sparrows stopped for a quick look in between chasing each other around the trees and finally departing at great speed into a thick hedge a couple of gardens away.
The birds were back at last and all, well, that much at least, was well with the world.
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