Garrulous birds go nuts in Mayo for nutritious peanuts

COUNTRYFILE

I'VE been having a bit of fun feeding the birds since we ran out of peanuts.

At least I'm finding the experiment interesting, even if they aren't particularly impressed.

They've had as many nuts as they could handle for a good while – and indeed, there are few of our feathered friends that don't relish a good feed of these, with their high fat, oil and protein content.

But what else would they eat?

Bread (brown, never white) was the first item on the menu. The feeders were removed and slices of slightly stale wholemeal were impaled on the branches of the fruit trees in their place.

It didn't take many moments for the blue tits, coal tits and great tits to find them.

The instant my back was turned they were swooping in to see what delights I had provided, but despite showing great initial interest they were disinclined to take more than a taste.

In fact, within half a minute I had blue tits tapping at the window, letting me know they weren't happy with their lot. I made them wait. I wanted to see what else might eat the bread.

Goldfinches didn't even recognise it as food.

A cock chaffinch gave some consideration to the matter and pecked off a few crumbs which fell to the ground where one of my favourites, the dunnock, picked them up appreciatively.

I thought the blackbird would like bread, but he was similarly unimpressed and took himself off to look for worms.

I gave them half an hour to see if hunger would make that ungrateful mob more appreciative. It didn't.

Okay, I thought, how about a bit of chicken? At first they didn't know what I had hung in the tree and avoided the skeletal remains of last Sunday's lunch as if it were some kind of apocalyptic warning.

Looking back, I suppose it was a bit like throwing them the flesh and bones of their great aunt, and perhaps wasn't entirely fair on my part.

The finch family fled into the hedgerow while the tits looked on, aghast, from a distance. The blackbird threw himself into his customary panic, leaping about the bushes and shouting at the top of his voice.

A couple of rooks flew overhead. "Aargh!" they cried. "Aargh, aargh!"

I felt a twinge of regret and was thinking of removing the offending carcass when a courageous coal tit decided to investigate.

It only took a peck or two for him to discover Aunt Agatha wasn't all bad, and once this individual developed a taste for its extended family, word spread quickly. The rest of the tit tribe joined the banquet, though not with the enthusiasm I had hoped to see.

The coal tits have this thing they like to do, where they carry food away and stash it somewhere in the woods.

And that is what they did for the next 20 minutes. They fairly stripped the old girl bare and had bits of her body concealed in every corner of the garden and the woodland beyond. Whether they actually liked the taste or not, I'm nor sure. Perhaps they were just hiding the evidence of what they percieved to be a great and ghastly crime.

Further courses to their luncheon included cabbage, which not one bird was remotely interested in (quite understandably, I thought).

Boiled potatoes were experimented with – the blackbird seemed to enjoy them, but nothing else was impressed. Sweet biscuits, butter, blackcurrant jam – all were studiously ignored.

They knew I would capitulate and give them their peanuts back.

When I did so every one of those birds was back at immediately, squawking, squeaking and fighting over every crumb.

A garrulous bunch, they are.