Bog Myrtle & Peat

I bought a ton of wheat at the end of August, but the tiny trickle taken by chaffinches from my feed hoppers over the last two months has made me question my ambitious logic. Thankfully, the last few days have seen a real influx of visitors to the feeders, and I’m now starting to wonder if I have enough wheat to last me until the spring. With the cold weather starting to come in, the handful of chaffinches buzzing around the feeders has expanded to a vast and ravenous army, and I flushed six pheasants today when I went to fill up the 70Kg hopper in the windbreak.

I’m using “Mac” feed nozzles (from Solway Feeders) on my feed hoppers because they seem to have the perfect balance -They don’t waste food but they are accessible, even to little dickie birds like sparrows and finches. A pheasant’s peck is enough to scatter wheat all over the place, so as far as the birds are concerned, the feed hoppers should be reliable and consistent right through to April, when I’ll stop using them. I probably won’t be shooting birds from the cover around my hoppers this winter, and I hope instead to see that the pheasants enter the breeding season in better condition than normal. It’d be more satisfying to shoot Chayne bred wild birds next year than it would to knock out the newcomers as they come in through the winter.

And the little birds are as welcome to the wheat as anyone. I’m also planning to put an automatic feeder up near the sheep troughs where I know that the black grouse like to congregate in the hard weather. Grouse are well known for being independent and able to take care of themselves, and while I don’t imagine that the black grouse would take from a feeder nozzle, they might be persuaded to pick wheat scattered from a spinner plate on a bleak day in January.