As part of our efforts to incite birds into our garden we have tried various suet fat balls and one of the ones we really like is the Gardman coco fat feeders. I tend to pick these up when I visit our local garden centre as they seem to be stocked there individually, however you can buy these off the Internet in packs of 6 or 10 shells from Amazon.

These fat feeders are the traditional type of fat feeder of a filled half a coconut shell. The shell is filled with high fat suet rich in oils for your local wildlife and is stuffed to the brim with lots of different types of seeds. The mixture in this fat feeder is supposed to attract various tits including long tail blue tit and also starlings. The design is straight forward there is a piece of Hessian type string threaded through the coconut shell and this then loops onto either a tree or a bird feeding station. The birds that do come to this feeder does appear to be the mainly the tits and starlings in our garden but we do also get the odd thrush having a try too. All of which are nice and pretty to watch and my son and I love watching them trying to get the shell in place to get the seeds out.

We hang ours from a tree and the birds just seem to adore this quality of the mixture inside this feeder as they only seem to last about 2 weeks at most before they are empty and you are left with the husk shell of the coconut. These are easily disposed of and the beauty of this compared to a fat ball feeder or similar is there is no washing out of the feeder to do to keep it clean. A friend of mine who has an allotment rather than throwing the shell out actually smashes it up and uses this around some of her plants to keep the slugs and snails away she claims it seems to work. I am going to try it this year with some seedlings that my son and I are currently growing in our garden as it seems a nice eco friendly way to stop those pesky slugs and snails attacking plants.

These are a lovely feeder for any garden they are eco friendly and easy to use and I would recommend them at around £2 individually for a garden centre or online for £10 for a 10 pack I think it is a small price it pay for the joy and beauty the birds bring into the garden.