Food for thought

Val looks at the pros and cons of feeding garden birds

- Val Bourne

WE made a change to our bird-feeding regime last autumn and decided not to provide food for the birds.

For one thing, we had too many pigeons picking up the crumbs and I got fed with my box balls and box chickens wearing pigeon hats. The bulbs around the box topiary were getting flattened by the pigeons’ enormous feet and we had rats and squirrels. And, let’s face it, they’re not good additions to the garden.

My wonderful ginger tomcat, Frank, was catching the odd rat and boobytrapping the garden path with them. This was ruining our street cred with our much posher neighbours, who are probably immune to anything of the sort. The squirrels, which regularly performed a flying trapeze act in an attempt to get peanuts, were also eating my crocus bulbs for dessert. Then there was the expense. I’m sure that you’ve noticed that the price of bird food has gone up.