Crush Yer Nuts!

Photographically speaking, I am not excessively proud of this image, but it serves to help me make a point - and it's not about photography.

Take a moment to look at this picture. You see a Sparrow about to make off with half a peanut.

Just look at the size of that nut, compared with the Sparrow's beak. Now he is a big boy and will probably be able to swallow that great lump. If not, his beak is well suited to giving it a good bash and breaking it up a bit.

But think of Sparrow chicks. Or Tit chicks. Or other kinds of small bird chicks. Already (second half of February) the Little Brown Jobs are starting to find places to nest. Eggs will follow and when they hatch, parents are going to be working in relays to feed their young. And although they do their best, they don't have the smarts to realise that a whole peanut, or even half a peanut, will choke their poor offspring to death in one meal. They are hard wired to feed their chicks at every opportunity.

So please, if you put out peanuts for the birds, as we do, start thinking about crushing them up, at least between April and September.

You really do only want a handful of nuts each time.
Otherwise it takes too long to chop them up and you're
left with more powder than nuts.

We use our blender for the job. But there's a method to doing that, that I have had to work out for myself. Because blenders are over-efficient for this sort of thing, if you put in too many at a time, and/or whizz for too long you'll end up with powder. So start off with just a handful. You don't even need to cover the blades. Then give three or four half-second whizzes. Let the nuts settle between times.

Of course, you'll have to do this several times to create enough chopped nuts to be of any use. Takes a while.

Okay, okay, but I never said it was a quick fix, did I?



We get some powder with this method, but there are still enough chopped bits to be useful. And it beats messing about with a rolling pin. You can use a colander to separate the powder out, and the bits can go in the nut feeder. The powder doesn't get wasted. We put it on a tray with seed and meal worms and it soon vanishes. But it does seem to put the birds off the peanut feeders, which is why we go to the trouble of separating it out.

Of course, you could just buy chopped or crushed peanuts. But that's the expensive way of doing it and anyway, where's the fun in that?

The powdery bits can be mixed with seed and/or meal worms, raisins etc and put on a tray or table, or they can be mixed up with beef fat to make fat balls,
or whatever you like that's good for the birds. And the crushed bits will go in your peanut feeder and help raise another generation of small birds.