Peanut Butter Feeder
…and Flutter Butter
Supplied by Ark Wildlife – http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk
See the feed and feeder at:
http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Item/Fat_-AMP-_Suet_Foods~Flutter_Peanut_Butter/SUFB/Flutter_Peanut_Butter_For_Birds.html
I admit that it took me a couple of goes to get the peanut butter feeder the right way up and the ‘flutter butter’ installed… but then this is an rather funky new food cleverly presented.
I’m always aware that the blue tits in my garden are pretty well at the foot of the pecking order, no sooner do they get on the sunflower hearts of fat-balls and something bigger and more aggressive turfs them off. It’s usually the great tits and even the mild-mannered goldfinches that usurp their positions. The latter will stay for ages at the sunflower hearts and I’ve even seen them fill up and nod off while hogging the perch.
That’s the way of the avian world but we interfering humans have a soft spot for blue tits, they were always first to the feeders when it was scraps on a bird table or the ubiquitous red bag of peanuts that was all that was on offer in my youth… when they were cheeky enough to get to the cream on the morning’s delivered pinta, while most of us were still in our beds!
By the late 1950s lots of people would hang up half a cocoanut and the tits were more or less the only takers. They were not the only ones attracted to the food but they were soon masters of clinging to a swinging food source when clumsier birds gave up.
So it has been with my Peanut Butter Feeder. It took the blue tits a couple of weeks to figure it out although in the first week they knew there was something tasty on offer and investigated the feeder. I realised a problem after that first week… they were not happy to get stuck in when the open end was facing inward… maybe they were worried about being trapped and predated. But as soon as I turned the open end outward they were in. In their first feeding week they were landing, pecking and leaving almost in one go and by the end of the week only the surface had been scratched… but a few weeks on and they disappear right inside the half empty jar can are picking it clean! I don’t know how much longer it will remain their sole preserve as the great tits are starting to check out the possibilities too!
One word of warning… do not be tempted to pop in a conventional jar of peanut butter… there is far too much added salt and corn syrup in most brands to suit the birds… and at £2.50p a jar, which lasts well over a month unless you are feeding a farm full of blue tits it will hardly break the bank!
If blue tits had hands I’m sure they would be giving this two thumbs up!