The Wildlife Trust has shared some guidance on how to get more feathered friends into your outdoor spaces – and it’s all about where you place the food
Rob Currell GAU audience writer
19:21, 20 Sep 2025
Wildlife Trust shares simple tip to attract robins to your garden(Image: AngelPietro via Getty Images)
For many green-fingered enthusiasts, the joy of gardening is not just about nurturing plants but also attracting a variety of wildlife to their outdoor spaces. The Wildlife Trust has offered some advice on how to encourage more birds into your garden.
The UK’s Robins, or Erithacus rubecula, as well as blackbirds, collared doves, thrushes, and dunnocks are a common sight in our gardens. These year-round visitors are easily recognisable by their distinctive red breasts and are known for their territorial nature.
Attracting robins to your garden involves more than just providing the right food. The trust suggests that positioning the food in a specific area could make your garden more appealing to these birds.
According to the Wildlife Trust’s website: “Some birds such as blackbirds, collared doves, thrushes, dunnocks and robins prefer to feed off the ground”, reports the Express.
A spokesperson from the Wildlife Trust emphasised the pleasure of having birds visit your garden, saying: “Attracting birds to your garden is easy, supplement naturally available food with bird food, and watch them flock in.”
They added: “Remember to keep feeders and tables clean, so the birds stay healthy and disease-free, and position your feeders in a relatively open area away from predators – the birds will feel safer and visit more.
“Make sure food is available at all times as birds have different needs throughout the year, such as feeding young.”
The Wildlife Trust advises keeping a variety of food ready to lure the small birds to your garden.
Three methods of offering food to attract birds:
Hanging seed feeders – these will attract species such as tits, goldfinches, house sparrows, greenfinches and siskins.Niger/Nyjer seed feeders – designed to hold tiny niger seeds, these feeders attract goldfinches, siskins and redpolls.Mesh peanut feeders – these devices allow birds to take only small chunks of peanut, rather than whole nuts that they might choke on if fed. These feeders will attract sparrows, starlings and tits.
Three main types of bird food:
Seed mixes – here the seeds are mixed into different blends, with the main advantage being that a greater mix of seed types attracts a greater variety of bird species.Husk-free seed mixes – similar to the above, the seeds in these mixes have had their husks removed, so there is much less mess to clear up and birds that can’t crack husks (such as blackbirds) can also eat the mix. Some husk-free mixes also contain other foods like dried mealworms and suet pellets.Suet (also called fat) – this food comes as blocks, balls and pellets. Lots of birds like suet and it provides a vital source of energy for them, particularly in the winter months.
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