5 easy steps to Winter bliss for your feathered visitors

So with Winter just around the corner and Christmas just 5 weeks away, we wanted to make sure you're fully prepared for the cold snap with these 5 easy steps to Winter bliss for your feathered visitors ....

• 1.       Your bird feeders should be filled regularly with fresh, frost free feed. Sunflower heart chips are an excellent source of nutrients for a wide variety of UK wild birds.
• 2.       Fat Balls and Suet Blocks should be hung in your garden and on your patio - again your garden birds will love these as they are full of nuts, seeds and the all important fat to keep them full and help them build up a healthy plumage.
• 3.       Birds like nothing more than live feed - but that can be very difficult for them to find when the ground is covered in ice and snow so put out some mealworms and waxworms - live are best, but dried will be a suitable alternative.
• 4.       Water baths and drinking stations should be filled daily with fresh cold water. Do not put hot or boiling water out, but on the other hand please try to keep the ice off the water.
• 5.       And finally, Nesting Boxes should be cleared out and repaired or replaced in preparation for the spring.

We hope that helps you cover the basics this winter - wild birds can survive very cold snaps but a fresh bowl of water, a handful of dried mealworms and a feederfull of sunflower hearts will be a very welcome sight on a cold frosty morning.
And don't forget our Photograph Competition where you can win a £50 voucher to spend at www.wildbirdfood.uk.com so put your feeders and baths in a position where you can see them from your kitchen window and get snapping away when your feathered friends come to dine.

5 easy steps to Winter bliss for your feathered visitors

So with Winter just around the corner and Christmas just 5 weeks away, we wanted to make sure you're fully prepared for the cold snap with these 5 easy steps to Winter bliss for your feathered visitors ....

• 1.       Your bird feeders should be filled regularly with fresh, frost free feed. Sunflower heart chips are an excellent source of nutrients for a wide variety of UK wild birds.
• 2.       Fat Balls and Suet Blocks should be hung in your garden and on your patio - again your garden birds will love these as they are full of nuts, seeds and the all important fat to keep them full and help them build up a healthy plumage.
• 3.       Birds like nothing more than live feed - but that can be very difficult for them to find when the ground is covered in ice and snow so put out some mealworms and waxworms - live are best, but dried will be a suitable alternative.
• 4.       Water baths and drinking stations should be filled daily with fresh cold water. Do not put hot or boiling water out, but on the other hand please try to keep the ice off the water.
• 5.       And finally, Nesting Boxes should be cleared out and repaired or replaced in preparation for the spring.

We hope that helps you cover the basics this winter - wild birds can survive very cold snaps but a fresh bowl of water, a handful of dried mealworms and a feederfull of sunflower hearts will be a very welcome sight on a cold frosty morning.

And don't forget our Photograph Competition where you can win a £50 voucher to spend at www.wildbirdfood.uk.com so put your feeders and baths in a position where you can see them from your kitchen window and get snapping away when your feathered friends come to dine.

Wild Birds Photo Competition in Full Swing

Have you entered the Kennedy Wild Bird Foods autumn photography competition yet?

We're offering one lucky winner a £50 online voucher to spend at www.wildbirdfood.uk.com.

The competition rules are very simple:

• ·         You must have taken the photograph yourself
• ·         You must own the copyright
• ·         You must post it to our facebook or twitter feeds before 14th December 2013
• ·         You must allow us to repost it & use it for promotional uses

So fill up your bird feeder with some fresh sunflower hearts & put some fresh water in your water bath and get snapping. Serious, funny, daft, artistic, creative - there are no boundaries and there will be some spot prizes for the funniest/strangest photo we receive.

Good luck & get snapping.

Protect your feathered friends on Bonfire Night

We have all been told of ways of protecting our cats and dogs on Bonfire Night, but what about our feathered friends who have no option but to be outside while they are surrounded by strange lights and loud noises.

While we can keep our pets tucked up inside in the warm away from the fireworks going off, it is vitally important that we take into consideration the potential dangers and harm we may cause to wild birds during the next couple of weeks.

One of the most common issues that occurs around this issue is from people building their bonfires too close to trees and nest boxes.

The issue here isn’t of fireworks actually harming birds physically, but is more to do with loud bangs happening close to where they are nesting that result in them having to move elsewhere.

This can be particularly harmful at this time of year as birds need to preserve as much energy as possible over the long cold nights that are fast approaching.

'Early birds' find worms for dinner - BBC Nature

We've just spotted this really interesting article about the feeding habits of wild birds on the BBC website and thought it would be good to share with you ...

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Birds, such as great and blue tits, search for food in the morning but only return to eat it in late afternoon, scientists have found. The team believe the behaviour maximises their chances of avoiding predators during the day without starving to death overnight. Researchers from the University of Oxford tracked the birds' winter foraging movements using tiny tags.

All five of the studied species of songbirds behaved in the same way. The results are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"Our results are important because they provide a new hypothesis for how animals forage," said Damien Farine, lead author from the University of Oxford.

"They suggest that animals integrate the different risks they face into one strategy that can be applied to satisfy both their need to avoid predation and avoid risk."

Scientists have been studying bird populations at Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, UK since 1947. Finding food becomes more and more relevant towards the end of the winter when large sources of food, such as beech mast, have become depleted. The team knew from previous studies that, when the predation risk appears high, birds delay putting on fat until late in the day.

"In the 1970s, when there were almost no sparrowhawks, tits used to be much fatter [in winter], which helped them avoid the risk of starvation.

"When sparrowhawks returned [in greater numbers], the average body weight of great tits, for example, decreased," Mr Farine told BBC Nature.

According to Mr Farine these birds had shifted from a strategy of being fat, to a strategy where they delayed putting on fat until late in the day.

... please follow this link to read the full article ...

Kennedy Wild Bird Foods has a wide range of food, seeds & nuts for domestic and wild birds as well as  cat and dog food.

Bird Watching for Beginners

A lot of birders have their first eye-opening experience with the avian world in their own back gardens - and usually from a young age. It could have been a robin nibbling on the berries on a frosty morning, a nuthatch visiting the feeder or a beautiful goldfinch singing on a warm Spring day. Whatever the species was, it opened the door to a wonderful world of wild birds. Most of us found soon after that while getting a handle on "garden" birds was pretty easy, the birds encountered further afield are another story.

Many are unfamiliar, only offer fleeting glimpses, or identification is elusive because they look just too much like several other species. When you are just starting out with birdwatching, identifying all of the birds you come across can seem to be overwhelming. However, before you decide to limit your birding to the confines of your garden, keep in mind that even seasoned experts run into birds that they can’t put a name to. Some birds will be a mystery but with practice, you should learn to identify most of the birds you see.

For better bird identification, try these suggestions:

• Study the field guide: Don’t just flip through your trusty field guide, take time to study it on a regular basis. Try learning how to recognize different bird families first before focusing on the species. This provides the framework needed for easier identification and makes it easier to learn about the differences between similar groups like hawks and falcons or ducks and grebes. Once you have a good handle on the bird families in your region, then you can start studying the species in each of those families.

• Field marks: This refers to the diagnostic characters that help identify birds at the species level. Instead of memorizing every tiny aspect of each species, just focus on learning the field marks to start. This saves time and greatly simplifies bird identification.

• Practice in the field: Whether watching birds in the garden or looking at waterfowl at a local reserve, see if you can place the species you see in their respective families and look for the field marks pointed out in the book. If you know which family an unfamiliar bird belongs to, identifying it may just be a question of matching it to a species in the field guide. Practicing also means learning how to use your binoculars better and learning how to look for field marks like eyerings, wing bars, and other common features.

• Take notes and make sketches: These practices might be the best way to learn how to identify birds because you are forced to truly study the birds you see. Start by writing down notes that detail what you see on the bird. For example, if you begin with the head of the bird, write about the shape of its bill, markings around the eye and on the face, the colors shown by the plumage, and so on for the back, wings, tail, and underparts. Next, try drawing a picture of the bird you see and attempt to copy its shape and the field marks that stand out. It might seem like a painstaking process but you will learn a lot about field identification!

What has been helpful to you in learning how to identify birds? Please share your stories in the comments of this blog or on our social media feeds - http://www.facebook.com/wildbirdfoods or http://www.twitter.com/wildbirdfoods

Winter is almost here

Somehow winter is nearly upon us again and if we are to believe the forecasters’ predictions, we’re in for another cold one.
So stock the cupboards, dig out the thermals and get ready for the snow. But, let’s not forget our feathered friends.
There are a few things we can all do now to help our garden birds through the tough times ahead.
It has been said before but is always worth repeating; start putting food out now for the birds so that when the severe weather hits, they know where they can go when natural food sources are no longer accessible.
Be prepared to put food out twice a day in really bad weather and consider planting berry bushes to offer a natural winter food source.

Also, place feeders in sheltered locations wherever possible. The best place to put them is out of severe winds but not too close to hedges and other platforms that predators could use to ambush the birds while they are feeding.
The best feeders for winter time will have a large cover over the feeding area to provide a bit of extra shelter for the birds while they are eating.
Stock up now on suitable bird foods. If we are all snowed in again this year, buying bird food will be bottom of the to do list when we do make it out of the house so if you already have a store of birdseed and peanuts then the birds won’t go hungry even during the worst blizzards!
Luckily seeds and nuts keep for several months so even if you purchase them now, they’ll last a while. We sell 25kg bags of wild bird seed which can be stored in your garage or garden shed - as long as you keep them dry they'll be fine throughout the winter.
Good winter foods are high in fat so things like peanuts are ideal and remember that salted peanuts and dry roasted nuts are not suitable for birds – so save them for Christmas parties instead!
Seed mixes and fatballs are also good high energy choices to see your garden birds through the winter months.


Nesting season is over for another year, so if you have nesting boxes, late autumn is a good time to clean them out ready for next year.
You don’t want to be out in the snow more than you have to so basic maintenance is better done now while the temperatures are still relatively mild.
As you probably know, birds need water for bathing as well as drinking so it would be well worth while ordering a bird bath now if you don’t already have one, ready for the big freeze.

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www.wildbirdfood.uk.com has a wide selection of wild bird food, nesting boxes, feeders and seed mixtures.