What to feed the birds

Right so we don't care if this is totally naff: it's time for a post on the dos and don'ts of feeding the birds during the cold weather.

Here's how to sort the hazelnut whirls (yum) from the coffee crèmes (ugh), as told to us by Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland.

Yum:

• Sunflower seeds. If birds were people and the mixed birdseed you get in supermarkets was Cadbury's Roses, sunflower seeds would be the purple ones. The other stuff is just filler – pigeons can eat it, but little birds like finches only really like the sunflower seed.
• Stale cake and biscuits if you have any lying around. In winter, birds need a very high-calorie diet.
• Wholegrain bread, cos they like the seeds. Bread is easier to digest if it is soaked in water first.
• Peanuts in a wire mesh feeder.
• Fat e.g. suet.
• It’s also a good idea to put out a dish of water (and replace it if it freezes). Birds need to keep their feathers clean for insulation.

Ugh:

• Uncooked rice because it absorbs moisture and swells in their stomachs, which is very harmful. Cooked rice is ok.
• White bread won’t do any damage but it isn’t very nutritious. Brown bread is alright, but wholegrain is better.
• Loose peanuts: easy to choke on.
• Salt: toxic to birds.

In my garden (in Lucan) this winter there have been about six or eight collared doves (pictured left) every day, which we never really had before. They look like pigeons but much prettier and not as fat.

Collared doves first came to Ireland as recently as 1959, apparently, and they mostly live in suburbs and small towns. They almost exclusively live near human settlements.

In the 19^th-century, these birds were only found in sub-tropical Asia. By the 1930s they had reached the Balkans, and they spread to England in 1955. In the 1970s they somehow ended up in the Falklands, and then in the Bahamas and they are now considered invasive in Florida. They're basically on the brink of world domination but nobody knows why their population has exploded. Here’s an interesting article about them from the Examiner earlier this year.