I have for some months now been placing food on top of a stack of logs which was left behind after our wood was clear felled. There was insufficient to merit a lorry turning up to collect them so the people  carrying out the clearance kindly said to me they would leave them behind and I could have them!  I pointed out that they were already mine.

So food on the log pile. What food well when I started back in September last year (2021) there was quite a lot of road kill about, largely squirrels but the occasional rabbit and even a roe deer. So I would pick up what was convenient to do so and lay it on the log pile, sometimes I fastened it with wire so that it could not be removed too easily and anything wanting to feast on it would have to do so at the feeding station. Unfortunately road kill seems to be a summer/autumn phenomena, I suppose it is the stupid ones that have not learnt the high way code, look right look left etc that get hit and as the autumn progresses into winter there are less and less as they wise up.

I have also been taking along any bones from what we have been eating at home, chicken carcasses and such like and I have invested in a few tins of dog food. The dog food does not seem to be liked that much. Recently we visited a friend who is a small holder type farmer and he gave me some meat well mostly fat and liver from his freezer which was surplus to requirements and had been languishing at the bottom of the freezer for so long that it was never going to get eaten.

Finally I have regularly been placing standard bird food on the logs, well not bog standard , more the up market stuff with no grain and added fat.

So what is the progress, well slowish. The food all goes and fairly quickly but whilst I am sat there in my truck, a little distance away I have not seen that much. This is what I have seen actually eating from the feeding station. Robins, Dunnocks, Blackbirds, Crows, Magpies. And that is it. There are Blue Tits and Great Tits close by but they don’t seem to recognise that the food is there. Also Wrens, Song Thrushes, Jays, are around. There is a Buzzard and I have twice seen it swoop down towards the feeding station but then veer off at the last minute, once that was because the Crows came down to attack it. Recently there was a Red Kite which circled round over and over and approached quite close but I think it was put off by my truck.

 

So that’s it so far, any suggestions very welcome

 

 

o