A rat’s chance of bird food shortage

I RECEIVED an email the other day from a lady who was appalled because she’d just spotted a large rat sitting on the peanut feeder she puts out for the birds in her garden and nibbling at the contents.

Her reaction was to take down all her feeders and put out rat poison. But then she started to miss the birds so she emailed me looking for a solution to the problem.

I get these queries frequently and I have had problems myself with rats trying to get at the wild bird food. It tends to be a seasonal thing because rodents instinctively store food in the autumn to see them through the winter. Rats are quite interesting animals but I can understand why people don’t want to attract them into their gardens.