Devouring

………. This is a small part of the noisy rabble that descends on the garden when I replenish the food ( which we are doing twice a day at the moment). Now that the starling babies have fledged, I would estimate there is a flock of between 20 - 30 birds in it …….. and that’s just the starlings! We also have many blackbirds, collared doves, pigeons, a few sparrows and at least three robins that try to get a look in.

As well as a variety of hanging feeders ( which get topped up daily), we have two ground food bowls ( diameter 30cms) which get filled up twice a day. However, it’s the fat blocks that the starlings adore - I put out one fat block ( see extra for size) every day at the moment as well as 4 fat balls in the hanging feeder, then this lot arrives and all the fat food disappears in about 15-20 minutes along with everything in the ground food bowls. I have had to ration it to refilling twice a day and still the poor blackbird spend most of the day hoping around picking up the crumbs, I feel so sorry for them but unfortunately I can’t ban the starlings.

Anyway, I’ve seen several fledgling blackbirds and robins so I guess they are managing to find something from the chaos ………… I’ll be glad when those noisy starlings depart for the summer ;-))