Bird feeding problems

A friend of mine feeds the birds in her garden, she's always buying seeds etc for them and bemoaning the fact that rats squirrels and crows are stealing the food while little birds don't stand a chance of having any.
And now she's got a colony of rats in her garden ... they've made burrows everywhere, and some of them are huge. She's often seen 5 or 6 of them together at the same time, feeding on the bird seed, and recently seen them by her back door, so she's had to get someone in to eradicate them.
She said there was a big dead one on her lawn yesterday, and she's feeling guilty that they have to die, because they're just part of nature.
Last year she had a squirrel in her attic and had to get someone to trap it. That was part of nature too ...

I don't know why she feeds the birds, she lives half way up a mountain and is surrounded by trees and fields, so surely there's enough food there for the birds, but she said she likes to see them.
Personally I've got a phobia of birds (I think it's called ornithophobia) I think they're horrible things and I don't care if they never come into my garden.

There are plenty of rats (and other wildlife) around here too, in the fields woods and hedgerows. I can hear them squealing in the night, but I'm not going to encourage them into the garden.

 

We feed the birds using hanging feeders filled with peanuts or suet pellets or sunflower hearts and we get dozens of little birds visiting them, strangely at the same times that we eat our breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea. They drop quite a few bits and along come the scavengers, the squirrels, the rats, the corvids and the pheasants and ducks to tidy the place up.

I have no quarrel with any of them. In fact, the rats eat a lot of things that the others are too picky to touch. They are nature’s dustbin men and as such I don’t discourage them. They are also extremely intelligent. Last summer we had one that had developed a large tumour on its stomach and, as the tumour grew, it became increasingly immobile. In the space of a few weeks it had learned when we would be coming to fill the bird feeders and would wait beside them for us to feed it, looking us in the eye as if to say “Could you spare a bit for me, please?” One morning it didn’t appear and we assumed that the tumour had won. We were quite sad not to be greeted by it.

 

We have rats here, but never on or near the bird feeders. There is hardly any spilt bird seed and if I spill some when topping up then the woodies soon hoover it up. My bird feeders are squirrel proofed so nothing but birds use them. And they are in cages and even the parakeets have given up.

Maybe your friend needs better design feeders?

 

I stopped feeding the birds with seed mix etc nearly 2 years ago now. In spite of spring loaded feeders and caged feeders, problems with rats squirrels and parakeets became too much. I still put a few dried mealworms out for the Robin and the blue tits but they often don't bother with them. We still get various birds in the garden, just maybes not so many.

 

Rats are everywhere, Ben actually caught another one this morning around the carpark in the park.
Not ideal around the house I agree, but I do make a distinction between rats living in gardens and woodland and the well known sewer rat.

 

Rats can certainly be a problem if they can access your house and that is when many people draw the line even when accepting them in the garden. I don't know whether methods have changed but years ago Pest Control people would always advise someone to stop putting out food for birds for several weeks if rats were in their garden.
Bird feeders which are Squirrel proof may help but inevitably some food will end up on the ground and the rats will take advantage as will any other wild creature wandering around in the garden.
Cats ( domestic pets ) roaming thru a garden overnight can also be a nuisance - particularly when trying to get into the Hedgehogs food station.