Many of our wild birds have a hard time this time of the year so we put food down in our garden. One particular blackbird appears every day for his share and has become quite tame. He sits outside, sometimes on the door handle, waiting for us to open the door. He then enters the house and walks down the hall and into the kitchen for his treat of blueberries. This happens up to four times a day. It certainly gives us a lot of pleasure.
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Remember feeding the wild birds bird during winter is a very good thing, but more importantly in this cold weather they must have water. I put water out this morning and within two hours it had frozen. So far three changes of water today, getting a nice pile of ice though.

We've fed birds for years and now and again we get rats under the food. We got our next door neighbour to shoot 4 last week,,,,rats not birds.

We had a visit from the Council rat man this morning.

One of our neighbours called him out and he wanted to check our adjoining fence and garden but couldn't see any evidence that they'd been around. He's put down poisoned bait in the neighbour's garden though.

Absolutely, Tom - have just warmed the fingers up......again.

A 25 pounder would make a better job.

A friends father in law did that, sitting by the French doors waiting for the rat to appear. When it did he raised his air rifle and fired. He really should have opened the doors first.

I’ve been sitting by my French doors watching the birds feed. Every so often Mr Rat appears, I’ve tried baiting the run he uses and a home made bait station I’ve construucted but he seems more interested in the feed and nuts the birds drop from the feeders. Unfortunately I can’t get a bead on him with the air rifle without opening a door or window which immediately I scares him off! It’s too cold to stake it out from outside so I suppose I’ll just have to wait till gets warmer!

Randa nasty little so and so's are Robins, they will kill others over their territory, but we love our resident Robin and Blackbirds. The only problem we have these days is the Sparrowhawk that has taken residence locally, however he truly is a magnificent bird and regularly perches in our apple tree which just happens to be where our feeders are hung