With all the cold weather we have had over the past week or so I have been feeding the garden birds to help them through the cold spell or at least that was the idea.

I put out some of the leftovers from our Christmas dinner, a bit of roast potato and some veggies and also a small bit of fat, which I mixed with birdseed and left out for them on a plate. There I was, thinking I was doing my bit, but my neighbour’s girl told me that you can’t put out that sort of fat for birds and sure enough, you can’t. I looked it up on the RSPB website and it seems like my kindness might have been killing them!

According to the RSPB, your not supposed to use fat from the turkey roasting dish because the meat juices have blended in with the fat making the fat soft and likely to smear on the birds feathers and damage them. It also breeds bacteria easily.

If your feeding the birds in your garden too I hope this helps. They need food and water on a regular basis and fed twice daily if the weather is particularly bad.