A hand-carved bird feeder featuring the figure of a monkey. It is made of jempinis wood and seagrass in Indonesia, and the wood keeps its natural colour. Jempinis is a wood used for carving in Indonesia. It is a weighty piece, about 2.5 kg packed.
Each piece is carved by hand, so the details of the monkey vary slightly from the photo.
A monkey in the garden
A monkey is an unusual figure in a European garden, and the rustic carving stands out from a distance, even in winter when the flower beds are bare. You do not have to put it away in summer either. Once you stop feeding, it can stay where it is as a garden ornament.
When to start feeding
Hungary's bird conservation society (MME) advises starting when the lasting frosts arrive, usually in the second half of November or in December, and stopping at the end of March. Do not feed from April onwards, because the parent birds would pass sunflower seeds to their chicks, which harms them. If the seed runs out for a day or two, there is no need to worry; the birds simply move on to another feeder.
On the MME's list, the most frequent visitors to feeders are tits, sparrows, finches and thrushes, with the great tit coming most often. Blackbirds and robins also like a halved apple placed on the ground.
A spot sheltered from the rain
Wood and seagrass do not cope with long spells of rain, so place it under the eaves, on a porch or on a covered terrace. Put out only a little seed at a time, and sweep out any that gets wet, as it turns mouldy. If the feeder is close to the house, you can watch from the window who comes to visit.