Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

I’ve often looked at the tea cup bird feeders and thought ‘that’s cute, but probably not practical’. Well over the weekend, I gave in to frivolity and bought myself a hanging tea cup bird feeder. The hook I had was actually too big for it to hang, so it’s currently just sitting in my garden basket by the deck. I threw in some fat balls and wondered if the waxeyes would mind using it. Well, as you can see, I got my answer – they love it!

Last week I had a fat ball just hanging from the hook and the wax eyes loved it too, but so did the local friendly baby magpie! He’s far too big to hang onto it – and it eventually fell down to the ground after a few days of that sort of punishment. The magpie is part of a family that visits every day for a feed (dog roll). We can hand-feed two of them, but the other two are a bit shy. They are real characters and very clever. I am certain they understand a lot of human language – or at least body language.