Attracting Rare Birds to your Garden

Whether or not you can attract rare or uncommon birds to your garden comes down to the proximity of nearby woodland and open space and the type of food you put out. Here in Greenham we have around a 1000 acres of open space and woodland at Greenham Common and nearby West Wood, so we're spoilt!

It has become really apparent over many months of experimentation that the best combinations of food for attracting some of the rarer garden birds are:

• Suet balls (aka fat balls) for Great Spotted Woodpecker
• Sunflower hearts for Nuthatch, Bullfinch and Greenfinch as well as  Blue Tit and Great Tit
• Nyjer for Goldfinch, Bullfinch (surprisingly) and Greenfinch
• Peanuts for Great Spotted Woodpecker, and Nuthatch + Great Tit, Blue Tit

Putting all this food out can work out expensive. At one point three Suet Balls were being consumed a day with Magpies and Starlings big culprits. The most expensive food by far are sacks of Sunflower hearts. 12.75kg can cost around £35 in the shops. One of the cheapest deals seems to be to buy on-line from Amazon where you can buy 10kg of Sunflower hearts for around £20 postage paid. The quality looks good too.