Anyone with a bird table is being urged to put out kitchen scraps, such as grapes, this December for a very important reason. It’s always a pain when you have food cluttering up your fridge or bursting out of cupboards, especially heading into Christmas. However, gardeners are being encouraged to use up the last few leftover grapes by scattering them on bird feeders.
In fact, fruit that’s not yet gone off but is no longer wanted is perfect fare for bird tables. Bruised apples and pears, browning bananas and tired grapes can all be put out on your bird table before they rot, and used to feed the birds in winter when they really need the extra energy due to dwindling food supplies and falling temperatures.
Garden website Bird Spot says: “A bird table is the perfect way to feed your garden birds leftovers. All sorts of food from your kitchen can be put out on a bird table, and this is a great way of feeding birds without having to buy bird seed. Leaving out your leftovers also helps with reducing household waste.
“Birds will happily tuck into bread, cake, and biscuit crumbs, mild cheese, bacon rind, cooked potatoes, vegetables, pasta, and rice. You can also serve up fruit such as apples, pears, bananas, grapes, and plums, even if they’re bruised or starting to go soft. Chop them up into small pieces and scatter some under your bird table, as ground-feeding birds in particular enjoy eating fruit.”
This will attract all sorts of birds to your feeders, too, including robins, sparrows, doves and dunnocks.
They added: “Many species of garden birds will use a bird table, including collared doves, robins, sparrows, and dunnocks. Even though they prefer hanging feeders, blue tits, great tits, and coal tits will also use bird tables, particularly if you offer them peanuts. Sunflower seeds attract goldfinches, greenfinches, chaffinches, and bullfinches, while fruit will be favoured by blackbirds and thrushes.
Start off by placing kitchen scraps on your bird table, so if it takes a little time for the birds to find it, you won’t waste money by throwing away uneaten food. Then, when you start to have plenty of visitors turning up, you can experiment to find out which food different species prefer.”
Comments are closed.