Never had a garden before!

My bird feeding station is all metal, has a single post with a spike on the end and a decorative base that sits on the ground. I also bought 4 metal hoops to secure the base to the ground because my garden is very windy. There are 4 "branches" to hang feeders from. There is a mesh dish for seed and a ring to put a water dish in, mine never worked because the wind blew the dish out of the ring. I think it is a Gardeman and cost about £30.00-£40.00. A lot to spend but it has been up now for around 6 years with no maintainance. Could do with a coat of paint now. It has proved cat, large bird and rodent proof so ultimately, worth the cost.

 

32 quid is *cheaper*?! I think there's a limit to how much I'm willing to spend on one, tbh. I can just use duct tape surely, lol. Do you think the stand itself is ok?

 

Do you have a link to it? It needs to go in the ground, I have no trees to hang it off. I just want one hook really, I can put some water elsewhere for the birds.

 

Cheaper option: Brussels Guardian Bird Seed Feeder

I meant this one that you linked, not the £32 one

 

Ah! The 20 quid one. I can certainly buy the £32 one, but ofc I need something to hang it off. That Amazon one, do you reckon it's alright? It has prongs that can go into the grass or soil.

 

have never used the metal poles as I have a tree but if I were to buy one I think I would want more than one hook in case I wanted to add more feeders with different food in.

At a quick glance this one looks nice
Amazon.co.uk

 

Just type bird feeding stations into Google and you will have a selection to choose from. There are not any single hook ones as they would be unbalanced. The majority are 4 hooks but you do not have to use all of them if you only have one feeder. The prices seem to range from around £12.00. You probably get what you pay for. The cheaper ones will probably be lighter weight than the more expensive ones.

 

The pole the OP linked is a single hook one.

 

Consider just a good bird bath over feeders. Cheaper and still great for wildlife. They both ideally need cleaning regularly because of avian diseases which is really a hastle in my opinion easier with just a bowl of water.
if they want food they can eat the hawthorne

 

That is an excellent suggestion, thank you! At first I thought, why do I need more than one? I'm a bit worried at the expense of the food, but people do tell me pound shops sell feed that is decent. I guess that's a whole other convo, what feed to buy! What do you get?

 

I don't like how they look tbh, and also, no room for one. I'm not putting anything on the perfect grass and that leaves the beds to put a pronged thingy in. But a bowl of water is a definite. What feed do you get for the birds? Am hoping to get something cheap really.

 

I get fat balls, peanuts and meal worms from Home Bargains then sunflower hearts from Ebay

 

Be careful about cheap "seed mixes" - they do often contain a lot of stuff to make up the weight. Sunflower hearts are popular with the tits and finches and you can buy these from Haiths or Garden Wildlife. Same with the Peanuts. Niger is also useful and Fat blocks ( various make ups ) over winter and Spring. You can also buy some of the above from The Range if you have a store nearby. Again, choose carefully.
Feeding the wildlife is not cheap but it is your choice. You will definitely benefit from a water supply of sorts - even more so in the current weather.
Once your "feeding station" is up and rumming, you can adapt the food you buy to suit the birds which visit.

 

We just have one feeder and use a general seed mix which includes sunflower seeds. We have one of the weight sensitive feeders so the squirrels and larger birds can’t get any - it’s lasted 9 years so far. We get all of the following on our feeder, am listing so you can be assured that you don’t need a range of feeders and seed types/mixes to get a wide range of birds

Nuthatches, robins, goldfinches, green finches. Great, coal and blue tits.

The following eat the seed which falls onto the ground, mostly courtesy of the goldfinches who are very messy and drop anything they don’t like

Robins, dunnocks, chaffinch, collared doves, wood pigeons, blackbirds, blackcaps, wren

We also put out a fat filled half coconut which all the tits, nuthatch and robins love plus it also attracts Long tailed tits, a woodpecker and starlings. We don’t put out fatballs and anything similar as the larger birds (jackdaws, magpies, parakeets) and squirrels can get onto them plus we can mix chilli powder into the half-coconuts which deters the squirrels. We love the squirrels and larger birds visiting but they will eat you out of house and home.

We just fill our feeder a maximum of once a day, regardless of how fast it empties. Around now is the speediest emptying times as all the fledglings are around. The coconut usually last 2-3 days but that can depend on if we get the starlings in as they are greedy.

We did try Niger seed when we first moved in but our goldfinches didn’t seem that interested although they could get that from the then next door neighbour.

 

Added bonus of sunflower hearts is that they won't sprout in your nice new lawn as some seeds do.