JackHarryBill

Finally a blog that I may maintain

Learnt feeding practices by birds?

Posted on | January 2, 2010 | No Comments

When I was a boy in Kent my parents often used to buy a coconut, saw it in half and hang half of it upside down in the garden for the birds. From memory the Blue Tits in particular loved this and could be seen hanging upside down pecking away at the coconut until it had all been eaten.

I have tried this a couple of times here in Haworth with no success. The birds just ignore it and it goes mouldy and eventually I take it down. In the recent cold snap I tried again with something similar, I filled a couple of yoghurt pots with fatball mixture and hung them from a tree in the hope that the Blue Tits would have something to eat that the other birds couldn’t get at. Over a week later a quick insepection showed that these have not been touched. I am sure that this would not have been the case with the Tits in Kent. Is this a learnt behaviour? Has anyone got any similar observations.

This did remind me of a short piece of video of Rooks on fatball filled coconuts that I took last summer in the garden. I have just uploaded it to YouTube:

Category: Wildlife
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