Feed the Garden Birds

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Unfortunately every time we put something out we get about 20 seagulls swarming down into the garden! Fairplay to the solitary crow who tried to face them down yesterday....
 
If they have stopped using the feeder, it may be that you have left the seeds in it all night and they are frozen.

Theyve never used it. If I take the seeds out and put them on the ground they come and eat them but they just wont use the feeder!!
 
dont put any fat or bacon rinds in a bird feeder it only draws rats. On very cold days the seeds will draw them too
 
Last year we had a pheasant on our back wall, very exotic for tallafornia, or at least i thought so!

We had one too in our garden for a few days, got a couple of poor quality photos to prove I wasnt going mad - oh i'm down the road from you in Clondalkin so it may be the same bird???
 
I've put out bread and cooked rice (had a load of it going off so boiled it up for them) and nothings been eaten since Friday...we have a kitten, but it doesn't go out very often, so I wouldn't think its putting them off. Put it up on top of the bin, to give it a bit of height...??
 
I'm getting just about every variety of bird at this point, including Gulls. I guess they are hungry too.......... Keep feeding folks, the poor things are starving.
 
The birds were unbelievably excited when I went out this morning. They were kinda screeching at me. They looked distressed to be honest. They love chopped apple and it gives them well needed fluids.
 
Have noticed small footprints in the fresh snow in the garden. Cat or Fox?

Could be either, foot prints are alike and you can get small foxes and large cats. I have seen a lot of fox prints including on the snow that is resting on iced over streams and edges of lakes. Fox prints are more like a dogs footprints. With cats, the toes are usually further apart. Foxes are on the move whereas cats prob stay close to home and paths/roads.
 
The birds were unbelievably excited when I went out this morning. They were kinda screeching at me. They looked distressed to be honest. They love chopped apple and it gives them well needed fluids.

Thats happening me as well! So funny yesterday, I went out at 7.45am and over to the car to start clearing it and a robin came right over to me at the car (im in a communal carpark so well away from my front door), and started tweeting madly at me. I went back over to my front door and he followed me, joined by some other birdies and it was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock!! They were all tweeting at me until I fed them.
 
When I was living in Clondalkin, I too saw a pheasant in the garden. Also heard very low flying birds making a whooshing noise. By the time I got out to investigate they had gone.

Today I saw an interesting bird, about the same size as a blackbird. It had a speckled chest, pink sides and white V shaped marking from the beak out past the eyes. Anyone have any ideas what this could be? (It was a redwing http://www.birdwatchireland.ie/IrelandsBirds/Thrushes/Redwing/tabid/1074/Default.aspx)
(Really pleased to see something that wasn't a sparrow )

We buy bird seed in bulk and feed all year. We get large sacks from the pet shop for about €20.