Nesting stuff (1 Viewer)

I invested in a "woodcrete" nesting box and stuck it in a nice inaccessible spot on the side of the house where my son can see it from his bedroom, and the blue tits are starting to look interested (fingers crossed)... I have been putting out "raw" wool in a spiral feeder which previously held a fat ball, and that seemed to go quite well (blue tits, great tits and, almost miraculously round here, a couple of sparrows took it away), and I experimented by putting out some cat fur combings (our cat is a fat and fluffy beast which seems to have no interest in birds at all, which suits me fine - on Saturday, I saw him sitting on the garden table while a blackbird looked for food underneath the table, and not a twitch from him). Remarkably (or maybe not - very nice soft fur!), that was very popular, so Moggy is getting the luxury of daily deep combing so I can put out more fur for the birds! I was a bit surprised that the birds didn't make the association with a predator. Maybe they don't operate by smell?

Gate - I first put out cat fur for the bluetits back in 2001, from my neighbour's cat. You can read about it on the page for April 12th 2001 on our website. There is more news about nesting material on April 21st and 23rd. I sacrificed a very old cushion, to provide feathers for them. They were snapped (pecked)? up very quickly. We had a Woodcrete box, until we replaced it with one complete with a camera - now my son has the Woodcrete box.

Hello Gate,

Am I right in thinking that by 'raw' wool you are referring to natural sheeps' wool collected from barbed wire or similar? If so, I would like to offer a word of caution from bitter personal experience.

Last year I added some wool I had collected to the other materials I provide for my canaries to build their nests. It proved to be very popular and was quickly all used. A couple of days later, however, I noticed one of the hens was having trouble perching and she also seemed to be constantly pecking at her foot.

On inspection her claws were all bunched together and resembled a clenched fist. At first I could not see any reason for this, although try as I might I could not open the foot out either. Eventually I resorted to a magnifying glass and found that the foot had become entangled in a number of minute individual threads of wool, which had become tightened by the birds own efforts to pull them off.

In the end I had to resort to using a small pair of nail scissors to initially cut each toe free, and then use a pair of tweezers to remove the strands of wool. It was clear that a number of the strands had cut deeply into the flesh on her toes but being so fine they were almost impossible to see.

Whether or not I missed a few threads that were embedded too deeply in the birds' toes I'm not sure, but shortly after the ends of two of them initially went black and eventually dropped off. Several more of my birds were also affected, but thankfully not as severely.

Needless to say I will not be using wool again and I shudder to think what would have happened to a wild bird in the same predicament!

Firstly, gate, birds do not have a sense of smell, but despite this, they are usually scared of cats!!
Good advice from Anthony though, natural wool can also contain ticks, mites etc. some of which can affect humans!!

Anthony's post is rather alarming, because 2 years ago I bought a holder for nesting materials, and with it came a bunch of "cleaned wool". It was used that year but I did not see any birds using it last year. I see it is still sold in one of my 5 catalogues, but the others are now offering a cotton mixture - maybe they have heard of this problem?

Presumably though birds in the wild will take this cosy looking nesting material if they find it caught up on barbed wire etc?

rogerk said:

Firstly, gate, birds do not have a sense of smell, but despite this, they are usually scared of cats!!
Good advice from Anthony though, natural wool can also contain ticks, mites etc. some of which can affect humans!!

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Probably good advice about the wool because of the length of the fibres from some sheep breeds but I personally wouldn't worry too much aboutt parasites that effect humans. I raised sheep here for quite a few years and I've never run into anything. I'm not saying that it can't happen, just that I think that it's a pretty low risk, at least in this country.
I usually allow the birds to have all the combings from my two donkeys after they've been groomed. It seems to make a good nesting material and i'm not aware of a downside to using it. Of course, if I don't collect it and give it to them, the birds will just pick it up off of the ground anyway.

rogerk said:

Firstly, gate, birds do not have a sense of smell, but despite this, they are usually scared of cats!!
Good advice from Anthony though, natural wool can also contain ticks, mites etc. some of which can affect humans!!

Click to expand...

This blackbird is definitely not the sharpest tool in the box (mind you, neither is the cat). I was a bit worried by Anthony's message, so I went and ivestigated the wool. It's actually "scoured" wool, so it's been cleaned and carded a fair bit, and it also appears to have been cut into short lengths. I may just cut it some more, though ....