Friday, 9 July 2010
Pigeon food
The other day, we noticed that most of the bird feed that we had put out on the feeder tray was being consumed by the local pigeons. To give the smaller birds a chance, Rosie went out and purchased a new feeder and installed it. That should stop the pigeons hogging all of the food.
Not a chance - it was not long before these daft birds had worked out how to extract the seed from the feeder. The whole apparatus needs to be reorganised to stop these gluttons from filling their crops at our expense. I am sure that they consume far more than the local squirrels.
Yesterday I saw a comma butterfly in the vegetable patch. Untill now the only butterflies I have seen regularly in the garden this year have been small veined whites, skippers and gatekeepers. It will soon be the season for the tortoiseshells and red admirals.
Today on my travels I saw a burnet moth. These distinct black and red moths are found around open meadows and banks where ragwort grows. The distinctly ringed caterpillars feed on the poisonous ragwort plant which makes then unpalatable to predators, as are the adult moths.
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2 comments:
Interesting about your pigeons. I guess they must all be gready, regardless of where they live, because our local ones sound just like yours. We have moved the feeders so that there is nothing near enough that they can perch on to reach. It has stopped them snaffling all the food in the feeders, although they still come into the garden and glean from the lawn anything spilled out of the feeders by the smaller birds, and of course anything else that we put out that cannot go into the feeders! Any ideas on what to do about that?
I am happy to feed pigeons, I just feel that they should not have all of the food. Pigeons will fill their crops to capacity at every opportunity, then they go and roost for the rest of the day - I always think of them as the cows of the local bird world. Rosie suggested that we should take the flat feeder off of the pole and use a ground feeder - less exercise for the local squirrels!
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