If you operate a winter bird feeder, you can easily make beautiful and interesting nature observations from the window. For this reason I also feed, and not because I expect it to have a nature conservation effect. Many of our endangered birds aren’t there in winter anyway. They are in the warm south and would not come to the bird feeder in the garden even if they were fed in summer.
However, there are species that come to the feeding ground not because of the sunflower seeds, but because of the small birds that want to eat them. The Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) should be mentioned here, which regularly appears in villages and at farms in winter and prey on them. So also at my feeding place.
This feeding place consists of a small house that I place on a crossbeam on a fruit tree and provide this with sunflower seeds. The birds can simply drop from the lowest branch of a tree nearby onto the table in front of the house. Most frequent guests are Marsh Tit (Poecile palustris), Great Tit (Parus major), Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus), Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), European Greenfinch (Chloris chloris), Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula), many House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) and one or the other Coal Tit (Periparus ater). I enjoy sitting at the window with the last cup of coffee from Continue reading Sparrowhawk feeding on a House Sparrow
