Table of Contents 1.

Offering the birds in your garden fat balls is often thought of as something you do in the winter when food is scarce, and the birds need an extra source of energy to get them through the cold winter months. But recently, the birds in our garden have turned that idea on its head.

For years, we’ve put out the typical round fat balls in a wire mesh feeder hung from the bird table, and all too often, that is where they would stay as they gradually turned rock hard and uneaten. After a while, the only option would be to take them out of the feeder, break them up and offer them on the bird table along with the other bird food. The local magpie would often take pieces of these former fat balls and soak them in the bird bath before heading off to eat them in private in the nearby trees.

As a result of this lack of success, we gave up trying, that was until I found an old square mesh feeder in the garage. With a trial stock of different flavours of suet blocks, I gave it a try and must be honest, it proved to be quite successful. Maybe it is because the blocks are a little softer, or that there is a larger surface area with a square feeder that makes the blocks more accessible. I don’t know but what is obvious is that there is far more interest in blocks than balls!

Having gained their interest, it seems the local birds also saw the advantage of using the blocks as a source of food for their young. A sizeable flock of fledgling blue tits would perch noisily in a nearby tree while their parents would fly short shuttle trips from the suet blocks to their brood to feed them. The higher-calorie suet-based food source seemed like an ideal supplement to the natural food available nearby. Hopefully, the result was a well-fed family that would form the next generation of garden visitors.

It wasn’t just Blue tits that took advantage of the suet blocks. Great tits, Robins, Starlings, Jackdaws and even a Great Spotted woodpecker made the most of them, so we’ve even boosted the number and variety of birds visiting. The moral of this story would seem to be – try different ways of presenting the food to the birds if you are not having a lot of success and also vary the times when it is offered. It worked for us!