In FGB - FAQs Part One we looked at reasons why we should feed garden birds (all of them good!), and we’re following up with this timely and highly apposite warning from the UK’s RSPB: please DON’T put the turkey fat out for birds on Boxing Day.

While many of us are more than happy to put out fat balls for the birds to nibble on, the RSPB is warning that putting out cooked turkey fat is potentially extremely dangerous to birds. Rather than being as beneficial to birds as other fats like lard and suet, turkey fat straight from the roasting tin could actually kill the birds it’s intended to help survive the cold Christmas nights.

Why might that be, my friends? There are several reasons:

• Turkey fat remains soft even when cooled, meaning it could smear onto birds’ feathers and ruin their water-proofing and insulating qualities. Birds need clean, dry feathers to survive the cold and a layer of grease would make this virtually impossible.
• The softness of turkey fat once cooked also means it is impractical to make popular ‘bird cake’ where you mix fat with bird seeds, as it will not harden enough to hold its shape.
• The fat in roasting tins cannot be separated from other leftover elements such as meat juices. This mixture can go rancid very quickly, especially if left in a warm kitchen for a while before being put outside, and form an ideal breeding ground for salmonella and other food poisoning bacteria. Birds are prone to bacterial infections at this time of year as their defences are low and their energy levels depleted with the cold.
• Many people add other ingredients to a joint of meat before roasting including rubbing it liberally with salt in order to crisp the skin. High levels of salt are toxic to garden birds (unless you have petrels or albatrosses visiting your garden feeders).

The cooking juices from other meats as well as turkey are equally unsuitable for feeding to garden birds. Best to leave meat fat to cool down and put it in the dog…

In fact, as I mentioned above, salted foods are a no-no under any circumstances. It might not seem an obvious problem, but most birds likely to visit feeders haven’t evolved to excrete salt properly: now might be a good time to point out that salted peanuts are very dangerous to birds indeed and providing them can do far more harm than good. Even rinsed salted peanuts can still retain dangerously high levels of salt (and damp food is more likely to become mouldy anyway).

In fact much of our store-bought food is salted to provide extra flavour - and the amount of salt in convenience foods is huge. Some small garden birds aren’t much larger than a human adult’s kidneys (the organ we use to filter and excrete salt from our own diet) and they overdose very quickly if we leave them our salted table scraps such as Pork crackling, salted Pretzels, Potato Chips, Processed Cheese, Ham, Hot Dogs, and the remains of Frozen Meals.

Mind you putting that little lot out in your garden will make the neighbours think they live next door to Homer Simpson, so best stick them in the bin instead anyway (or not buy them in the first place)…