Starlings on the fat ball feeder

[nanila]

[Click to embiggen.]

These are the first starlings we've seen in our garden this year and I was lucky enough to catch them on the fat ball feeder on a sunny (if very windy) morning.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

Still got their winter plummage on. I love starlings.

[nanila]

So they do - it's a bit late, given that their breeding season normally starts in mid-April, no?

I was surprised we didn't see the starlings much over winter, but very happy they're back for spring!

[ysilme]

What a great image! Our assorted bird feeders are high in demand, but I can't take good pictures anywhere without startling them up. We have starlings for the first time this year since I switched to fat balls with insects and have added large fat blocks to our bird buffet. But it's so much joy to see them all feed and be about.
If I may ask, I'm having a fat ball feeder like the one you have in the background, and thought about also getting the one in the foreground. What are your experiences with the two in comparison; are they both accepted equally well?

[nanila]

Thank you! Ooh, fat blocks are a great idea. I worry about having a table out, though, because of the cat. Our cat is too lazy these days to go after birds hanging from feeders, but I worry that if we put out a table he'd see that as a cat buffet. :/

The large toroid fat ball feeder is definitely the more popular of the two, and is always emptied first. The blue and great tits obviously prefer it to the smaller cylindrical feeder in the foreground, as do less frequent visitors like the woodpecker, starlings and long-tailed tits. The sparrows don't seem to care.

The only "down" side of the toroid fat ball feeder is that it takes so many fat balls at once (8-10) that keeping it full gets quite expensive over the cold bit of winter, when the birds are emptying it every couple of days!

[ysilme]

Thanks! That sounds good about the toroid fat ball feeder. For me the advantage seems that I might perhaps not have to fill it up every other day, as we're out of fat balls very quickly since the starlings arrived.
I'm having the fat blocks in special, simple block hangers which are frequented mostly by the tits and sparrows, which I welcome since the starlings took over the fat ball feeder. We also do have a flat floor bowl for soft robin and blackbird food, but as it contains raisins and we're having five cats inside garden-sized pen where also the feeders are, I'm going to get a special cage so they can't get at the raisins by chance, and the food also keeps for the small birds and keeps the resident magpie and the doves off.
They're all eating quite a dent into our pocket! During snow or freezing times I need one to two pounds seed per day, two pounds of peanuts a week and a yet uncounted number of fat balls, too. When I first ordered at the shop specialised on wild bird feeding I wondered about the bulk prices, but not any longer. *g*

I'm fascinated how well the feeding with cats work. We have a huge, gnarled, old apple-tree where I can hang a lot of feeders secure from cats, and we provided all kinds of perches and hiding places close by. The cats have entertainment, but no hunting success, and our garden is most frequented by far by the local birds. In winter, we sometimes also have one or even two spotted wood-peckers.

[nanila]

Aha, I must get one of those block hangers. Thank you very much for linking to the picture so I know what to look for.

When our cat was younger I would not have put up the feeders, as he regularly brought us birds as big as wood pigeons, grey squirrels and once he even managed a full-grown magpie, which I thought was quite a feat. Cats rarely seem to get the best of corvids. Now that he's older he seems content with chasing but not catching feathered prey. Possibly this is because we now live in quite a rural location and he gets his fill of grain-fed small mammals!

[lark_ascends]

Pretty!

[nanila]

Thank you!