Baby it's cold outside!

We've got an outdoor thermometer in the garden, right outside the window. So when I get out of my warm bed at silly o'clock I can tell whether I need to put the heating on with a general idea of the temperature. 10 plus and it's warm enough, 5 or less it needs to go on!

This morning it was MINUS about 7 or 8 - not quite 10. Which immediately made me think about the poor birds outside, and what I'm going to give them for their breakfast.

Mr and Mrs Homer seem to be geting into baby making mood, and are hungry every morning, so they are fine with their tin of Asdas finest cheap dog food. The rest of the gull population are showing an interest so I have to stand by and make sure that the residents get their fill first. Normally it's just two for breakfast.

We put all our kitchen scraps out for the birds. Do you? You'd have read that we have a mouse worry in the previous blog, so I'm very limited in what I can get away with bird feeder wise, and all food has to be eaten immediately and completely or the mouse police go mad.

Earlier in the week they'd had three Aldi mince pies which my husband proclaimed 'as hard as board'. All the dog ends of cheese and any bits of meat go out. We had a chicken yesterday, and as with beef, we put the fat in a bowl and sop it up with bread broken into chunks - they all LOVE that and it goes within seconds. Plus it stops it blocking up your drains.

I find it really thrilling that I can go out in the gardem at any time of day and shout Homer and he comes to be fed. That a wild bird will do that still amazes me. I'm not sure who is trained though, him or me...

Cake, biscuits, buns, anything with a fat content is perfect. Mashed potato and cooked potato generally goes down well too. Starlings and Blackbirds will also enjoy dog food. When Homer has finished, they polish the bits of food up and jelly - he's not keen on jelly...

Make sure that you put water out too, especially in this weather. I just have a plastic garden saucer that auto-fills in the rain. Yesterday it was frozen solid, the slab is probably still on the lawn. You need something that you can break up and replace with fresh so a plastic saucer is ideal. Yesterday morning I was thrilled when I saw a Pied Wagtail walking up and down on the lawn picking at food! That's the first time I've seen that one in the garden, they are usually in car parks!

So there you go. Some ideas for doing your bit for conservation, that don't cost you any money, use your scraps and save food going to landfill. Perfect!

When I got to Asda today I shall buy a block of cheap lard to make bird food with. Very embarrasing buying it, it stinks to high heaven when you melt it, but the starlings LOVE it. More on that later!

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