Fat Ball Slim

Who needs a TV when you have several bird feeders?

The cabin is a bit like a bird hide and we get hours of entertainment watching our feathery friends flying around and chomping. They have already gone through a large bag of peanuts and are now on some mixed seed and sunflower hearts we picked up from the local garden centre.

We have also made our own fat balls – which are probably a lot healthier than the ones you can buy and the birds love them. We put all the ingredients in the food processor...Peanuts, sunflower seeds, ground flax (linseeds), oats, polenta and water. Whizzed it up and left the mush to stand for about 30 minutes, then separated the mixture and rolled into balls. We didn’t weigh anything out, just whizzed it all up until the right consistency. It’s really easy to do and probably much cheaper.

In the garden each day, we have mostly Great tits, a couple of Blue tits and this morning we have seen our first Coal tit. We also have Greenfinches, Goldfinches and Chaffinches, a robin and a magpie - who usually sits watching the others from high in a tree...and who the other day managed to turn the fat ball feeder upside down, emptying the ball out and then it flew off with it’s prize...We have since bought another feeder which is magpie proof!

It is a wonderful novelty to us seeing these beauties and their confidence has grown, often they fly around the windows and enjoy looking in at us too.

We are happy that neither kitty seems interested other than watching from the safety of the cabin, there are so many birds that both of the boys are probably quite fearful of them. Floobs hasn’t caught anything for a long time and Tiky once left a vole at the door when we first moved in and nothing since, so it’s with great relief that they leave the birds alone.

Love Kay and little Gnomey Pops xx