Jon, Jane, - anyone - What particular overwintered seeds/fruit have you found successful? I'd love to attract crossbills.. and see mistle thrushes closer.
Some years we get flocks of goldfinches on the knapweed heads in the fields, I agree, it's an absolute joy, (and other years nothing, and never any interest in the teasel (?)), and on rare days, bullfinches on the buddleia seed heads, which is a thrill, and wrens and sparrows in tall grass tussocks in the spring, I think after insects.
In autumn the sparrows seem to like or at least peck around the bases of the annual acorn weed and that annual weed with sprays of pretty pinky red flowers 30 cm high, I've heard it called redlash.
(found it =
https://www.first-nature.com/flowers/pe ... culosa.php)
We have a hedges of native guelder rose berries, but not much seems interested, just the very occasional blackbird or thrush, and for just 5 magical days some bullfinch pairs, (I think success depends a bit on a sunny spot, and a very quiet sheltered location,) and likewise, the hawthorn,blackberry, holly and cotoneaster berries are never finished and fall, and nothing seems interested in the ornamental cardoon or sea holly seed heads. Bees visited sunflower flowers, but the seedheads just rotted uneaten on the stems. (I do realise mice and invertebrates (and rats?) will eventually eat all these on the ground).
A particularly big-berried native holly on the edge of a wood gets stripped by December, but holly berries in the garden are left. So perhaps there's a glut of food in gardens, especially towns and villages, but birds living out in the countryside have it a lot harder or have different sized territories or move around more, or have less disturbance. In January for 10 days, fieldfares pecked the worms gathering under pony dung and then moved on.
And if I could grow the right garden plants for the birds, it might save a fortune on sunflower seeds (and airmiles/carbon), but I don't want particularly want to spare the space or have the work of putting in an agricultural non native bird seed mix in the fields. Perhaps the bolder seed eaters prefer the easy option of sunflower seeds in seed feeders, and the shy birds prefer privacy, as simple as that.
In March/April, hundreds of spiders are basking on heaps of dried wood club-rush leaf litter. Pigeons and blackbirds gorging on the ivy berries right now (mid April). Something has gnawed it's way out of the hogweed stems.
I wonder about hibernating bees and caterpillars etc when cutting/clearing or rather moving, dead plant litter in late winter, and in early spring I fear injuring hedgehogs, nests of vole young, or frogs and toads.
PS
Do nothing for nature -
https://butterfly-conservation.org/news ... his-winter