Gareth Howell

We do very well for birds in our current garden; unlike the poor showing at our previous house. We have daily visits from starling, blackbird, wood pigeon, collared dove, goldfinch, greenfinch, robin and both tree and house sparrow. Earlier in the year we also had blue tit, song thrush and chaffinch and yesterday we even had black headed gulls in the garden. Oh, and I mustn't forget the pair of Mallard that took a liking to us for a few days!

To attract this lot we have several feeders with a variety of seeds, nuts, maize, fat balls; plus kitchen scraps and stale bread.

A few weeks ago we were overrun with baby starlings (I counted 25 at one point); eating everything in sight. We had to resort to putting the fatballs in a cage to preserve something for the smaller birds as the starlings strutted their stuff and bullied everything else out of the way. Now we seem to have a host of house sparrows. They move too quickly to count but they empty the feeders in just over a day.

We bulk purchased seed etc, but we are really getting through it right now. A big sack of mixed feeder seed (mainly sunflower) costs about £16 and lasts about six months, so it's not too expenses; and the payback in terms of entertainment makes it all worth while