The people at Farnbrook Farm recently sent me a Garden bird food hamper to review. This consisted of:
1kg Premium wild bird food
1kg Peanuts
1kg Sunflower hearts
5 Fatballs
100g dried mealworms
2-port seed feeder
Spiral Fat Ball Feeder
The sunflower hearts were very popular with the sparrows, blue tits and even the robin hovering at the feeder provided to get to them. The feeder provided was built out of plastic and didn’t seem that strong, but the birds did not seem to mind and it withstood all the recent strong winds well. Once the sunflower hearts had gone, the feeder was filled with the Premium wild bird food and that went nearly as fast.
The peanuts were nearly as popular with the birds. I tried putting some out for the hedgehog, both soaked for a day and unsoaked and the hedgehog ate both.
The died mealworms went quickly when I put them out, the robin would go straight for these when it spotted them. They were also eaten by the hedgehogs when put out for them.
The fat balls were very popular, the first disappeared quickly in my new garden once the sparrows and blue tits found it. The starlings loved them too. The spiral shaped feeder is a nice looking design (well I liked it!), something different from the usual cylinder cage, and the birds did too. One minor thing is the way is the tension in the coil was too strong when I first used it. This meant that when one fat ball had been eaten, the weight on the coil decreased and it retract, the result being the gaps between the wires was too small for the bird to reach the fatball within. When I tried the remaining fatballs in the more classic cylinder cage type they were.
Overall the bird food was of good quality and the birds certainly seemed to like it. I’ve learned over the last couple of years that birds can be quite picky with the bird food you put out, with some seed mixes and fatballs in particular that are ignored by the birds and others that are swiftly consumed by the birds. I pleased to say all the food provided by Farnbrook Farm was the latter.