There are many ways in which you can help the birds and wildlife in your garden live happy, healthy lives. See below for advice on feeding garden birds, birds nests and nest boxes, and hedgehogs.

Feeding Garden Birds: The Dos & Don'ts

• Feeding the birds in your garden is really important to their survival during the winter. Water is also important in the winter too for drinking and bathing.
• You can continue to feed garden birds in the summer too. Parent birds have to work really hard to find enough food for their young as well as themselves. Research shows that the parent birds continue to look for natural foods to feed their young, and eat the food from the bird table for themselves.
• Provide bird food at a variety of different heights:
  • Seed, fruit, fat, bird cake and kitchen fats on a bird table - ideally covered to keep rain off
  • Nuts and seed in hanging feeders
  • Food scattered on the ground
• Make sure that bird feeders are positioned in the open, so that it is not easy for cats to sneak up on feeding birds.
• Never feed peanuts loose - only from wire mesh containers.
• Never feed milk to a baby bird. This can cause enteritis which usually proves fatal
• All feeding devices and containers should be scrubbed regularly, and repaired before the start of the winter. Bird tables should have a hole drilled near the edge to allow water to drain away. It is also a good idea to move feeders around occasionally to allow the ground beneath them to recover from the effects of spilt food and trampling birds feet!
• Bird foods to try in your garden:
  • Suet
  • Short pieces of bacon rind
  • Tinned pet food
  • Chicken carcass hung in a tree
  • Grated cheese
  • Hard-boiled egg
  • Peanuts (not salted - and never fed loose)
  • Mixed "wild bird" seed
  • Hemp, millet, maize, corn
  • Boiled or baked potato
  • Cake crumbs
  • Fresh coconut
  • Biscuit crumbs
  • Bread crumbs
  • Raw oats - but NEVER made up into porridge
• Foods to avoid:
  • Orange and lemon peel
  • Banana skins
  • Anything containing salt - e.g., salted nuts, salted bacon rind, crisps
  • Spicy leftovers
  • Desiccated coconut
• Make sure your garden has plants that will provide food for birds:
  • Cotoneaster (horizontalis or wateri), elder, hawthorn and ivy are all good berry providers.
  • Alder (near water), michaelmas daisies and thistles are good for seeds.
  • Blackberry bushes, gorse, hawthorn, holly, honeysuckle, oak and yew trees make great nest sites.
  • And all flowers and plants that attract insects will in turn attract birds to your garden.

Birds Nests & Nest Boxes

• Put up a nest box - their are lots of types that you can buy for different species of birds, or you can make your own. It should not have a perch beneath the entrance because this will encourage predators. Make sure you position it out of reach of cats. It must not be in full sun or with the entrance in the direction of the prevailing wind, so it should ideally face East and should never be on a South facing wall.
• Help provide extra nesting material by putting human hair, or cat or dog hair, from a brush, somewhere for nesting birds to find.
• If you have a cat as well as a bird's nest in your garden, make sure you keep it indoors when any baby birds are leaving the nest. When baby birds first leave the nest, they often spend a few hours on the ground, being watched and fed by their parents, and they are very vulnerable to cats at this time.
• After the end of the breeding season, when the nest box is not being used, make sure you clean it out thoroughly ready for the next year's residents.

Hedgehogs

• Hedgehogs eat slugs and snails and other garden pests too. Encourage them into your garden by putting out dog food for them at night. Provide a dish of water too. But NEVER bread and milk!
• If you have a garden pond, put a plank of wood into it that hedgehogs can use as a ramp to get out if they fall into the water. Alternatively, put in some chicken wire dangling into the water so that they can use it for climbing out.
• Stake down garden netting so that hedgehogs don't become entangled in it.
• Always be careful when using a strimmer in case you injure a sleeping hedgehog.
• Provide a cosy nesting area for hedgehogs in an undisturbed corner of the garden. Piles of leaves next to sheds are ideal. You can also buy or make boxes for hedgehogs to hibernate in.
• Always check for hibernating or nesting hedgehogs when lighting bonfires or raking over compost heaps etc.
• Always tidy away any rubbish in the garden that may be a danger to wildlife. Birds legs can easily become entangled in loose pieces of garden netting, and hedgehogs can get their heads stuck in tin cans etc.

To read our article about how to ensure your garden is a safe environment in which hedgehogs can live and hibernate click here.