Birdsong and Christmas

Waking up to the sounds of birds singing early on a morning has to be one of the pleasures of living away from the constant drone of a city.

With the return of some some warmer weather the windows are once again opened early to let the fresh air in and it would seem that the birds are in fine song.

Maybe it has been the rain and the blustery wind that has kept them silent for the past few weeks but it is fantastic to hear them once again.

In the spirit of Christmas our thoughts turned to caring for the garden birds and to topping up the feeders.  

Sadly one of them has become a bit waterlogged and the seeds have started to sprout in the greenhouse conditions of the plastic tube.

Putting on the rubber gloves we start to dismantle the base tray from the tube by unscrewing the plastic bolt underneath.  This allows the tray to be washed.

All the experts seem to suggest that regular cleaning is essential, some even suggest on a daily basis but lets be practical, it will only get cleaned once the green slime grows or like this feeder the grass starts to grow.

Cleaning the feeder

Sorting out the tray is the easy bit and using clean water and a fresh non scratch pan scrub it soon comes clean. We are not using any soap or cleaning products (bubbles) so as not to leave any residue after washing.

We rinse the tray in a solution of baby sterilising fluid ( Milton) working on the theory that if a new born child would be ok then a bird should be fine.  We mix as per the instructions on the bottle.

The hard part now,  as we try and dismantle the tube and remove all of the feeding ports to get to the gunge at the bottom of the tube.

Key to this seems to be the screw hidden on one end of the through bar that holds the ports in place.

A little word of caution  – Do Not twist the bird ‘stand on rings’ as these will snap out of the latching positions and may crack the tube.

This feeder would be one of the larger ones and as such will take a bit of time to sort so we will give you a follow up in the next post to let you know how we got on.

Christmas Day tomorrow  – so to all our readers have a safe and happy day and maybe you might like to get in touch with any nature themed gadgets or photos of your Christmas Day walks and what you saw.

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