Garden Wildlife UK

Aaah, enjoyed that, Willpar - and the musical soundtrack ......

Blue tits came after, but was already down stairs.

Is there a time where you should change the type of seed for summer or winter birds?

Depends on what you are using at the moment johnd83. I adopted a mix used by Willpar, which is pretty much all year round for all birds. I'll leave the detail of specific foods to the more experienced members.
I use my own mix and vary the content depending on the weather. For instance, I put out more suet based food in good weather and more raisins and mealworms in bad weather. I also raise the number of mealworms per serving during the nesting/fledging season.

I feed sunflower seeds all year round. I put lots of mealworms out this time of year.
The other foods I get are nuts, sometimes sultanas, then some fat balls / squares / candles, whatever seems to be on offer.

I vary my feeding regime very little throughout the year. I offer the same seed and hearts but in winter I tend to put out more fresh fruit.

The berry suet pellets I have at the moment are even more powdery than the last lot. I've always sieved them before putting them out but there's a lot of powder left with these after the birds have eaten them all.

For a few years I've been getting the 'Suet to Go' ones as they've always been consistently good - maybe they're just having a blip but I think I'll try some different ones next time.

It's a shame my bird (feeding) houses (covered bird tables) have a floor with two pieces of wood, where the debris gathers even though I have a square plate underneath the small mesh ground feeders I have inside two of them.

Not only that, one piece of wood is always higher than the other so the floor is uneven. This means the plates slope if you don't want the birds playing see-saw in there.

I know this is the way/size wood is cut to make best use of it all but that's something I'd have if I could make/was making my own - a thick (so it wouldn't warp) one-piece-of-wood floor.

I suppose there are some tables like this out there somewhere ....

Have you any old baking tins to use as a liner.

That's a good idea, greenfinch but to fit in through the gap they would have to be smaller than the floor area. It took me two goes to get the right size square plates to put under the ground feeders in there.

I think it would have to be something flexible to cover the whole floor area - what's that Bake-O-Glide stuff like?

I suppose a pole system is the way to go if you have cats amongst your trees - I have been looking at this one:

http://www.livingwithbirds.com/feeder-m ... le-system/

Has anyone got one they are quite happy with? I'm not really keen on them but can see they're a good idea if you have no trees or suitable ones for hanging feeders.