Have all birds gone into lockdown? (1 Viewer)

[canonman77]

Where’s all the garden birds gone, I live in rawmarsh, Rotherham in South Yorkshire & have autumn/winter mix seed on table, sunflower hearts in a feeder, suet log, nijer feeder up, but only get resident pigeons & doves. Am I doing something wrong with where my feeders are placed.

Cheers
Sean

 

[Mono]

This time of year can often be a lean time. There are a few factors:

Many birds, even ones we think of as residents, migrate. The summer ones have left and the winter ones not yet arrived. There can be a downward shift "your" birds have moved down to the south coast or even down to Spain, but not been replaced by birds from Scotland or Scandinavia. Your local birds can often be two different populations and there is usually a time gap.

Autumn is the time of "mists and mellow fruitfulness" the countryside is brim full of wild food. Normally territorial birds will gang together and move around en masse looking for and plundering these wild resources while they last.

Once the the winter birds have arrived and the hedgerows emptied the birds will be back to your garden.

 

[Kits]

Did you used to get a lot of other visitors? My only thought is that there's not a great deal of cover such as shrubs near your feeders.

I'm still getting lots of blue tits, great tits, long tail tits, coal tits, nuthatches, blackbirds, robins as well as wood pigeons plus odd visits from great spotted woodpeckers and treecreepers.

 

[Euan Buchan]

Certainly feels like they're in lockdown it's been weeks since I filled my feeders they are still fully topped up though I still have to put a new coconut up once in awhile but I do get some birds. Even in my local patch it's been fairly quiet.

 

[canonman77]

Hi Kits, on the left side of photo, out of shot are a row of shrubs/hedging which have been trimmed to fence height, there’s the hawthorn tree in centre of photo, which my dad decided to hack at & it’s struggling to recover, & the buddleia which again been hacked at, we used to have dogs that’s why the garden is paved & gravel, but ain’t got dogs no more. Could do with some fast growing shrubs etc if anyone has ideas? We used to get house sparrows, dunnocks, wren, blue/coal tits & doves, pigeons, but now only a pair of doves.

Sean