Grow Your Own Magazine

I've just been watching a female Blackbird building her nest.

I put a good pile of homemade compost (not completely crumbly, still chunkyish) on top of my Wisteria pot and she's flying backward and forward with beakfulls of it.

So just goes to show that homemade compost really has a multitude of great uses.

Birds also love dog hair to line their nests with too. Every Spring I put clumps out around the garden, under bushes, in trees and in a fat ball feeder, it's so funny to watch them pulling it apart!

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Always aim for the best result possible not the best possible result

Peanut aka Joanna

Good for you, helping the "wildies"

I expect there are quite a few worms in the compost too - easy meal for a blackbird.

I too, put out dog hair for nesting material, surprising how brave they get too, they come quite close to the house to collect it.

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A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! (Thomas Edward Brown)

My 'rough stuff' in compost terms, goes in the bottom of bean trenches. However, before I fill them in again I let the air (and blackbirds) get at it for a day or two. Hog heaven for a bird!

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Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon!

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 7th 2008

I've got several wire hanging baskets that have the fibre sort of lining, at this time of the year they are always getting attacked by the birds for nesting material. Little devils

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Off to China

4 weeks ago 2 Robins built a nest in a box on a tree in our front garden. They hatched 2 weeks ago and the pair of Robins worked so hard feeding them, then on Tuesday they all left the box, only to be attacked by a Blackbird, but we think they all got away. After 4 weeks of hard work the next day the same pair have started to build another nest in the same box. They really are gluttons for punishment! It has been really interesting watching them.

I emptied out the old nests from the boxes and found one that had housed Great tits lined with the hair from my Ginger tomcat

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Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

Last week the Jackdaws were in my garden ripping strips off the fleece and flying off with it for nests. Has anyone else seen this.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

No, but I saw a great tit attacking a small piece of capillary matting I'd left out to dry! Its now got a hole in it where it was pecked away...grrr!

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Manda.

Yet Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean; so over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes.

coconut hanging basket liners are the favourite in our garden with sparrows and ravens

Ive filled one of those holders that usually have fat balls in them with horse hair from my friends horses. The blue tits who have come back for their second year to their box in the tree certainly appreciate this. Bernie aka DDL

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Appreciate the little things in life because one day you will realise they are the big things