No Mesh Nets! New Years Resolution - #SteppingUp

Meet Long John.

This one legged Blue Tit has been resident in my garden for a few months now.

He seems to get by quite comfortably despite his obvious disability. So much so, I didn't realise I had taken a photo of him, whilst popping out between torrential downpours to get to day's blip.

Now I can't say for definite how he picked up his injury, it could have been in all honesty been escaping a predator, but there is another possible explanation for the missing limb, and it something I have been wanting to blip about for a while now.

How about we make a New Years Resolution?

If you feed your birds in the garden like me, you probably buy fat balls. The vast majority of them now come without the green mesh nets around them, but some suppliers still put them in them. Now I won't advocate you boycott the suppliers that still mesh their fat balls, but if you do buy them, please, please, please cut them off before you put them out.

A fat ball bird feeder costs less than three pounds in B&Q or the RSPB shop. Yes there are more expensive ones, if you want to put more food out, but to save blue tits like Long John here from possibly getting their legs amputated when they get tangled in them, it is money well spent surely?

You see, what happens is their feet become ensnared in the mesh, and they fly off with the net bag still attached, that eventually gets ensnared in a hedgerow or a tree, and their only means of escapes is to continually try to fly off until the actually rip a foot or a leg off. Quite horrendous really!

Added to this, it is also needless plastic packaging. There is evidence that when it eventually ends up in landfill, it is being used by gulls for nest material, with devastating effects for their young chicks.

The RSPB put out a press release before Christmas advising on mesh nets and fat balls, please take a minute to read it, and make a New Years Resolution to stop using mesh nets for your fat ball foods.

The whole campaign started in this Forum Thread if you want to see the story of the campaign from the beginning.

There are more photos of Long John in my Back Garden Birds Flickr Set.