Summer caters for chaffinches with caterpillar

THESE DAYS I fill the peanut feeder at the bird table only a quarter full. Otherwise, jackdaw gangs arrive and take turns hacking at the mesh, breaking the nuts into scraps which fall on the grass where team mates gobble them up.

With only two inches of nuts at the bottom of the feeder, even the agile, upside-down-foragers can’t manage the knack of getting the scraps to fall clear, so they give up and the small birds get a chance of a meal.

Strangely, a pair of chaffinches are regular peanut clients. While chaffinches eat seeds in winter, at this time of year, they usually survive and feed their young almost exclusively on bugs. This makes life easy and makes them useful garden birds.