With the nights rapidly drawing in and the mornings becoming decidedly chillier, it seems that winter could be upon us before we know it. Already it seems we’re having to wrap up warmer when heading for the office in the morning. And even those who either work from home or who no longer work must be noticing how much colder it is in the mornings, especially for mid-September.

But those of us in our Third Age are not the only ones who suffer in the winter. It is also a particularly difficult time for the birds. We can’t be alone in noticing how many fewer birds we seem to be getting in our gardens these days, the result perhaps of our changing climate, the reduction in their natural habitat and, sadly, the seemingly inexorable increase in that furry predator we know as the cat. All the more reason then why we owe it to the few garden birds we have left to help them through the winter by providing them extra food wherever we can.

Personally, we keep our various bird feeders topped up all year round. Not only does it help the birds through our changing seasons, it also gives us a considerable amount of pleasure. As well as the more common Blue Tits, Great Tits, Blackbirds, Robins, Sparrows, Dunnocks, Chaffinches and Green Finches, we have managed to attract some of our more attractive species of bird to our garden on a daily basis.

Goldfinches, as timid and wary as they are, just love the niger seed we put out for them in a feeder far enough away from the house not to startle them but still close enough for us to be able to delight in their beauty. Likewise the tiny Goldcrest, Europe’s smallest bird. While we’ve never seen them taking food from one of our feeders, there’s something about the abundance of food in our garden that seems to draw them in. Whether it’s because of the food itself or because of the safety in numbers factor with so many regular visitors to our garden we’ve no idea. But whatever the reason, we’re always delighted to see them.

Long-tailed Tits are one of our particular favourites. These tiny, fluffy, delightful little birds seem almost comic in their size and shape with their big round faces and their tails that seem to go on forever. But what we find most astonishing is the numbers we seem to attract, as if whole families come swooping in at the same time to flit between the fat ball feeders and the nut feeders.

But our greatest success, and the one we delight in more than any other, is the Great Spotted Woodpecker. Visitors to our home are constantly amazed that we manage to attract so many of these astonishingly beautiful birds into our garden on a daily basis. We’ve seen as many as three on our feeders at the same time, and they in fact are the reason we installed the first of our camera feeders so that we could record and watch again and again this seemingly incongruous visitor to our typically British garden.

One of the things we like most about the Great Spotted Woodpeckers – apart from their size and striking colours – is that it is so easy to identify the males from the females and the young from the adults. And we can truly watch nature in action when every spring an adult will be followed in by a juvenile or two to teach them how to jump between the fat ball feeder and nut feeder we have strategically placed directly in front of our kitchen window. Simply astonishing!

If you want to learn more about British Birds, we can highly recommend the Collins Complete Guide to British Birds. Its easy-to-read format and superb photographs make it the ideal bird book for novice or experienced bird watcher. (We also find its easy-wipe cover a boon, particularly when it spends most of its time on our kitchen work surface getting covered in flour, sugar and whatever else because our kitchen window affords us the best view of our garden!).

There’s such an astonishing array of Bird Feeders on the market. See our Bird Feeders article to find out which birds prefer what feeder.

But if you truly want to make the most of your bird watching, we can highly recommend buying a Bird Feeder Camera Kit which come in both wired and wireless form, ideal for those less accessible parts of the garden. See our Bird Feeder Camera Kits page for further details.

And then of course there’s Bird Food. You’ll definitely want Peanuts and Fat Balls in different feeders. To attract the likes of Goldfinches you’ll also want Niger Seed, and to give your garden visitors a real treat during the long winter months, a Mixed Wild Bird Seed such as Chapelwood’s Premium Bird Food. See our Bird Food page for further information.

And if you want to give your garden birds a real treat, we can highly recommend Cooking for Birds by bird expert Mark Golley. Cooking For Birds brings you some of the most popular and successful bird food recipes there are, combined with a range of useful cookery tips and helpful hints on what to feed and when. Whether it’s a treat for the Tits, a nibble for the Nuthatch or a bellyful for the Blackbird, there is plenty here to entice a variety of visitors to your bird table or bird feeders!

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