I have eye for the birds!

I never thought that expression “pulling a few birds” in retirement would be so easy given the number of visitors I am having at home right now.  All shapes and sizes and degrees of “friendliness” and all sorts of colours too.  OK, to be honest they are the feathered variety of birds but nonetheless they are welcome visitors given the time and effort that has gone onto attracting them to the garden.
So far we have seen three varieties of Tit, blue, common and coal, a Robin, a host of sparrows of course and at first a lone Starling.  At first we thought that this poor lonely looking Starling had got lost, was abandoned or had been brought up thinking it was a Sparrow.  So my plan to “discourage” it was put on hold which with the benefit of hindsight was a mistake as now we have six of the flaming things thrashing about among our little garden birds like a gang of thugs.
I tried all sorts of ways of deterring these unwelcome guests but somehow each time they managed to outwit me and take most, if not all, of the suet block I had put out for the tits etc.  I think I have found a partial solution now (omitting the Facebook suggestions I got involving my already discounted 12 bore and a new one, “get a Sparrow Hawk” ) which is to hang a peanut feeder ball that is not so attractive to the Starlings as they are rather ungainly in flight and find hanging or flying upside down somewhat difficult.  Added to this is a new cage type feed with tube for seeds in its centre.  So now I hang a square of suet in its small cage inside this larger bell shaped feeder cage.  This doesn't stop the Starlings feeding but it does limit the amount that they can take and they soon get bored and clear off.
These arrangements have not gone without problems though and I have been forced to go out in all weathers to re-hang the feeders, top up the peanuts, the suet block that has broken and scare off the cats that are sitting underneath the feed area in hopeful anticipation of a bird supper.
We have had some very funny moment watching the hapless and greedy Starlings, perched on a metal rod that keeps the inner suet block away from them, spinning round desperately trying to leap from the rod to the peanut feed ball that is hanging nearby.
Our highlight though this week was to see our first of now what has been several visits of this little colourful chap!

Meanwhile my efforts to thwart the starlings are almost as epic as the efforts I made a few years ago to deter the cats of the neighbourhood when they were using our garden as a cat public toilet and battle ground.  I spent a fortune on cat repellent potions, condensed lion dung and an electronic device that only worked once before I gave up on that little purchase.  The first night I installed it we had gone to bed and at about 10:30 I heard this blood curdling caterwaul indicating that the unfortunate cat from next door had triggered the device.  From then on “Bob” the cat from next door still came into the garden but walked all around the edges keeping his distance from the detector.  One day to our astonishment Bob came into the garden peered down the length of the lawn and then bunny hopped over the beam given off by the cat deterrent device!  I gave up after that and was shocked to learn form our paperboy that he was the one that could hear the painful subsonic sound given off by the device and it made him want to run away!   In the end the real and as it turned out the cheapest and most successful was the positioning of three or four 2 litre mineral water bottles half filled with water at strategic points in the garden.  These it seemed had the effect of “dazzling” the cats and deterring them from using our lawn as a toilet.
These days the cats are kept at bay by simple vigilance and a sharp clap of the hands but my latest attempt at blocking their route under the fence at the side of the house has caused a minor mystery which I think we may have solved.  The other day I laid all sorts of entanglements in the shallow dip under the fence knowing that the cats would not be bothered with trying to negotiate the tangled maze and would climb the fence if they wished but it would limit their access to the undergrowth directly under where the birds were feeding. Today I saw a cat shooting out of the garden using the old escape route and on investigation found that all the tangled branches and thorny twigs etc had been removed and the scrape made completely clear.  Now no human could have done this as the scrape is inaccessible to any path outside.  We think it is our old friend Mr Fox who has been along and cleared his pathway given that we blocked one of the three that featured in our garden when we moved in.  Clever devils foxes!