A kitchen staple you may already have at home could have robins and other garden birds flocking to your garden. Birds are a welcome sight in gardens, partly because they make them feel vibrant and lived in.
But they also do important jobs that help protect the health of your plants and flowers by going after pests that can cause damage and disease. However, they may need a bit of extra support during autumn and winter, when there’s less of their favourite food around as the frozen ground often stops them from getting to the creatures they love to eat.
Making sure they’re fed and provided with water is therefore key, but you don’t always need to lay on seeds and grains.
According to the RSPCA they love to eat a variety of different kinds of food, including cooked pasta. However, it’s crucial that you cook it only in water, without salt, butter, spices, oil, or anything else that could harm them.
You should also cut up larger pieces so its easier for them to eat. The carbohydrates pasta contains are a great way to give the avian creatures an energy boost in the chillier conditions.
You can get a 0.5 kg packet of pasta for as little as 41p at Aldi, for example, making it a cheap way to mix up their diet with a small amount of leftovers.
They also like other food scraps like rice, boiled potatoes, cheese, and can even stomch uncooked and unsalted bacon rind.
But as with humans, they need a balanced diet to stay healthy.
The charity says garden birds like a variety of different types of grub. This includes fruit, (namely raisins, sultanas, apples, pears and soft fruits), and grains and seeds that are suitable for them such as nyjer, millet, oats, and sunflower seeds.
You can feed them peanuts, but as with the pasta they must not be salted. They also need to be fresh and not contain aflatoxin (a poison produced by certain molds).
It’s also important to only put them in feeders with a smaller mesh as young chicks can choke on whole peanuts.
Other options include net-free fat or suet balls or insects like mealworms or waxworms, the charity says.
However, it warns dog owners to be “careful with grapes, sultanas, raisins and some artificial sweeteners”, as they’re toxic to pooches.
They also need to get plenty of fresh water, so gardeners are advised to leave out bowls of it regularly if they don’t have bird baths, and avoid putting feeders and bowls near places that could be a haven for predators to pounce on them.
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