HAS YOUR GARDEN GONE QUIET? You may be thinking that there is little left in your garden now but falling leaves, driving rain and blustery wind. That all your beautiful garden birds have left the UK and migrated south for better weather and warmer climes. But all is not lost - happily most of our feathered garden friends are actually winter garden birds too. Resident all-year-round, you just might need to encourage them to show themselves. There’s certainly less birdsong filling our gardens in the winter months.

It’s a real treat to see wild garden birds eating nuts, grains and seeds that you have provided for them especially in the colder months when you know that you are also helping them to survive the winter. Feeding birds doesn't just make them full and happy it is also surprisingly mindful and makes us feel good too. Our ELIZABETH Bird Feeder Tree is positioned literally outside our kitchen window and above this is our bathroom so in the morning, if I open the blind slowly

One of my earliest memories of spending time with my Scottish granny was going out into her garden every morning, brushing away the snow when it fell, and scattering the ground with an incredible variety of food for her “birdies”! It was a ritual that I really looked forward to being part of and I adored sitting in the kitchen afterwards and watching the robins, nuthatches, siskins, tits, blackbirds, sparrows, dunnocks and many more wild birds feasting on their breakfast. Weirdly though as a grown-up, I

Should you feed birds in the summer? This is a question that is much debated especially amongst my mum’s generation but in a nutshell (and according to the RSPB) the answer is YES! So hooray! There’s no need to stop feeding birds in the summer. We get to play chef all year long! But just like with humans we should vary the food with the seasons but I will get to that in a bit. The answer “yes!” might come as a surprise to some because

Providing a safe watering hole for our wild garden birds is a wonderful thing to do. It not only helps sustain life but also gives us the chance to observe our feathered friends as they drink, wash, preen and, in the summer, use the water to keep cool. Watching them fluff up their feathers and dip and dive in the water is a truly magical spectacle and one I never seem to tire of. As you know, we design and sell copper bird baths and I

We all know that water is a vital ingredient for life, and this includes for our wild garden birds too. They don’t need bottled water from France or Fiji or filtered water or even fresh rainwater - tap water or water from a hosepipe will do just fine. But they need water! The big question is how long can birds survive without water? When I was researching this topic I was shocked to read on flockingaround.com that in extremely hot weather (113˙F/45˙C) some smaller birds like finches

My GELDA bird baths caught the eye of Dr Olivia Chapple who, in 2011 in honour of her son, started the national charity Horatio’s Garden. During the school holidays, Horatio volunteered at the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Treatment Centre in Salisbury where his father was a spinal surgeon. Horatio wanted to study medicine and it had been his idea to create a garden for patients spending time in the spinal treatment centre and to this end he devised a questionnaire to ask patients what it was

I am often asked how did this all begin and of course there is a story to tell. One day two friends were chatting on the telephone about work – one in London, one in Hampshire – but it turns out that both were looking out of their windows gazing at the birds feeding on the seeds and fat-balls swinging from their trees and soon they were no longer discussing business but birds! But only one had a bird bath and the owner of this bird