Coconut shell suet treats

4.45 out of 5

40

they have been out about a week, but the birds are not showing much interest in them, preferring suet blocks or fat balls, perhaps they need to be in place longer for them to get used to them being there? sorry but at this time i won't recommend them, i won't buy anymore of them

It took almost a month for the birds in our garden to take notice of these coconut shells but I’m so glad I took the time to let the birds find them. I also put two back to back hanging from the same hook and that seems to have gone down well... they are visited daily by Blue Tits, Great Tits long tailed Tits, Coal Tits. The starlings adore them too... my biggest surprise was that a Great spotted woodpecker visits the coconuts daily and ignores the peanuts. Only the goldfinches and the Robin don’t want to know. At the moment I’m putting a new shell every 2 to 3 days so have ordered a bigger pack... next time I will go for the biggest box.

I added a review the last time I bought these about the size of them. It was not posted. So here again I will point out - just before buying them again - that these shells are getting smaller and smaller. Shame the price does not reflect this. I note somebody else commented on this back in January. I note rspb response. You must have a lot of leftover suet then !!!

RSPB response: Thank you for your review. We have investigated this with our suppliers and are monitoring the situation as it should now be resolved. Please contact our customer service team if you find the sizes have not improved and we will raise this again with our suppliers.

Hung from feeding station these seem to go down well.

The coconut shells are great. The birds LOVE them. However, every time I have ordered them, the shells (and the contents) are getting smaller. I am going through 1.5 shells a day - so very expensive!

RSPB response: Thank you for your review and for notifying us of this issue. I apologise that the shells appear to be getting smaller. I have contacted our supplier regarding this to look into why this is happening, as far as we are aware our coconut halves should not have decreased in size. We will look to rectify this as soon as possible.

the 'string' attached to the coconut shell feeders isn't really a problem at all ! If you feel it's insecure attach your own 'cord', i.e. maybe even nylon garden twine which I find (for its usual use) is, with a secure knot, very unlikely to come loose or be chewed through by birds attempting to dislodge or unhook the shell. The size of the shell is not predetermined by RSPB, they can only use and offer for sale whatever/whichever ones they get in ! As for smaller birds getting a fair chance, you cant have it all ways ! !...leave the shell on the ground and it's a free-for-all and they have to take their chance along with larger birds....I find that suspending the shell from the edge of a feeding table does not stop larger birds having a go at it, but leaves better chance for smaller birds....I see larger birds such as pigeons greedily eating from a shell left on the ground but seldom if ever trying to hang upside down in order to cling to and feed from a suspended shell.

I've bought these treats many times over the past few years and the birds love them. However, the boxes bought recently (Oct to Dec 2016) contain much smaller shells. About 30% smaller than before in fact. As the product is priced and sold in unit number, this is a significant reduction in the amount of feed provided. Very disappointed.

RSPB response: Thank you for your review, sorry to hear that you are disappointed. The coconut shells are natural and are bought by our supplier as they come therefore sizes can vary and it is not a decision to reduce the size. However we will pass on your comments to the supplier and check that supply of the shells has not changed.

I think your short cord shells are an improvement.
My daughter gave me wire hanger with two positions to hang
shells on. The long cords caused a collision preventing total
clearance without intervention.
Please offer short cords as an option.
Suggestion:
Mix a small quantity (10% by volume ) Niger into sunflower hearts,
It helps the seed to run in the feeder and entices other varieties
to the feeding station.

To ensure the smaller birds get this lovely treat I drill a hole in the coconut shell and insert a hook so that when suspended it is hanging upside down. I remove the string before hanging. I read this hint on the website ages ago and found it very useful.

great for the small birds provided they can get some!

i have an rspb feeding station and found that sparrows and other small birds are out muscled by everything, first thing the starlings decend on bloc to raid the feeding trays, then the magpies and rooks turn up

i have taken to mixing buggy nibbles with seeds into a seed feeder. not only making the string longer, but turning the feeding trays away from the sheels so that the rooks and magpies don't get a perch, lean over and scoff the lot in ten seconds.

now using longer string, but toying with the idea of tying the coconut shell onto the end of a horizontal bamboo cane at the top of the feeding station

just feel that the small birds need more help

Excellent product have been buying this for some time, but now the string is too short to hang . Please sort this out.

RSPB response: Thanks for your review. We had a batch a while back which had shorter hanging loops, we discussed this with our supplier and future production will have longer string.

I seem to have a rogue batch - the string is either much to short to go around a hook or isn't attached to the shell. I wanted to hang them for the smaller birds but just have to put them on the ground where they get gobbled up quickly by crows

RSPB response: Thank you for your review. We have spoken to our supplier who has ensured that all future deliveries of our coconut treats will have the correct length of string. Please contact customer services who will be happy to help.

Up to a few months ago I would have given these 5 stars as the birds love them. Starlings, woodpeckers and blue tits are constantly feeding on them.
However, the hanging strips are now so short that I can barely fit them over a small branch, indeed they only fit over twigs which don't really bear their weight. The strips used to be much longer and were so easy to use. I prefer my feeders to be in trees, rather than on feeding stations as cats can reach those,and I am disappointed that I can no longer use these coconut shell treats as before. If it was a cost cutting exercise to shorten a piece of string by an inch, then it isn't worth it if people stop buying them.

RSPB response: Thank you for your review. We have spoken to our supplier who has ensured that all future deliveries of our coconut treats will have the correct length of string. Please contact customer services who will be happy to help.

We only have a small garden and don't really get a lot of birds usually but when I put these filled coconut shells out the garden gets filled with Starlings who absolutely love the contents of the shells. I have had as many as seven Starlings all trying to get a place on the shell. Unlike some reviewers I have never had a problem with the birds not being able to reach the bottom of the shell. These shells are also very easy to put up as you get a fixed loop of strong so all you need is a decent hook or a large nail and a fence post and away you go. I love watching the birds enjoy their food. The birds get through these quite quickly (about 1 per day). I thought that the box of 10 was actually very good value. I suspect as they have proved so popular with my feathered friends I will be buying a box of 20 shortly or I might first try the buggy ones to see how they like those.

We have bird feeders in front and back gardens and had never tried the coconut feeders. Recently we decided to try then as a treat! Every bird we feed loves them. Starlings cling on and fight for posession and we have been putting out one every day. One of the coconuts in the box had a loose hanging cord so we put it in our front garden bird table. The woodpigeons and collared dove loved it so we will cotinue to put one on the table. They even ignored all the variety of nibbles for a while. None of the suet feeding things are cheap but the pleasure we get from watching 'our' birds squabbling and feeding their young makes it worthwhile. Since we started feeding suet based products our bird population has increased enormously. We feel that the birds would give us five stars for our bird restaurants.

I can't recommend these enough, the birds in my garden from magpies to sparrows all love these suet treats. I've had to ration them too two a week they attract so many garden visitors and soon get hollowed out by enthusiastic avians. Great value too and biodegradable.

These are really popular with the starlings and woodpeckers that come into our garden, but the sparrows and tits will happily dig in too... I would love to say that they last a week, but we hang 3 or 4 out at a time and they're normally gone within 3 or 4 days.

The only thing that I would say is that sometimes you can get a dud batch - we had one batch where all the rope hanging these came out of the shells... made it a lot less easy to use them, especially trying to avoid the cats! (And we have cats, but with lots of trees in the garden it is possible to get both birds safe and have cats... )

I've bought coconut treats for many years but these are by far the best that I've found. They literally get demolished within about a week and I've got 3 out at any time. I've got all sorts of birds feeding - woodpeckers, great tits, robins etc. Sometimes I have a queue of starlings who line up on my garage gates waiting for their turn and 2 will feed (one upside down) at any one time so I would thoroughly recommend this product.

I have previously bought two boxes of these treats. I enjoy watching our three woodpeckers demolishing these. We had to hang them upside down as the crows and magpies enjoyed them a little too much. Woodpeckers and blue tits can manage this fine. Any mess that they make is soon enjoyed by robins and finches.

I will be buying more soon.

We have had the delight of watching three different woodpeckers enjoying these. We had to hang them upside down as the crows and magpies also liked them (a bit too much). Anyway, the woodpeckers and the blue tits can hang upside down to eat these. We have to replace two coconuts at a time - every week.

I will be ordering more as the box we have has nearly finished.

Bought these the first time round and the birds soon eat them!! So got myself another batch and no doubt they will go again!! Very good product. Highly recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i brought some other these before and went down so well and quickly so this time i got 2 boxes and hope the birds enjoy them as much as they did the first time..best to hang it where other birds can feed under it for the little crumbs that drops as my garden robin loves it too. Packaged well and good value and most birds in my garden love them.. starlings more then another bird at the moment..

We find that this product needs another string on the other side as the birds sit on the top and peck from the top so when the coconut there is exhausted they cannot access the coconut at the bottom. If there was a string on the bottom we could turn the shell upside down so that the top became the bottom. We also find the string is not robust enough after a few visits from starlings and we often find the shells on the floor.

These are very popular with the birds in my garden provided I put them in the right place (which I am learning by experimentation). When I hang one in the garden, it disappears very quickly.

Truly a box of delicious little saviours for the hungry winter birdies!
It is a pleasure to watch them from the tiny Blue Tits to the mobs of Starlings getting their fill.
My family's garden may not be large or glamorous, but the birds sure seem to think otherwise now, and what's more, the box of 10 was generous enough to last the whole winter!

I just started giving these a go recently as a quick food alternative to put out in the place of whatever feeder I want to clean. It took a few visits within the hour before the blue tit gave it a try. The only problem now it that they are small and so only one bird gets to munch at any given time and so the only time my little blue tit gets a shot is when one of the starlings has had enough. Starlings can munch into one of these pretty quickly and so I'm getting the impression that one shell is only feeding one or two Starlings. But they are convenient and so I'll definitely be buying more. I've also been noticing that the Robin has been choosing to feed on the ground below it so it might be a favourite for the Robin. Good product, just too easy for the bigger and greedier birds to munch before any others get a chance.

Similar to another reviewer, I was buying these from a local garden centre but they stopped stocking the RSPB version. I bought a few darker-coloured non-RSPB versions and my birds turned their noses (beaks) up at them, making very few pecks on them indeed! A quick trip to the RSPB online store - my delivery arrived swiftly - hung them out today and pecking began again immediately. Fantastic quality product, and genuinely appreciated by a variety of birds.

These are our second most popular food (after Peck'n'Mix, which seems to get inhaled by the birds!) - and it's a lovely treat watching the woodpeckers which are now regular visitors to the garden pecking away (and we're in the middle of a city...)

We hang the shells on a tree in a communal area by our flat and so far we have had 13 species including a woodpecker stopping by! Low maintenance - no rushing out to re-fill as with feeders and good value when bought in bulk!

I bought these with my last order. We fed suet blocks, nyjer seeds, fat balls and the seed mixture before adding these. They were ignored for the first few days and now there are squabbles over them. Our robin bobs about underneath to pick up the dropped bits.

The coconut treats are extremely popular. I bought them for tits, which love them, but most are consumed by starlings. Starlings alone very easily clean out two a day, which makes them very expensive! It is far worse when rooks discover them, and smash them to the ground. I have found that using a loop of wire to extent the length that the coconuts dangle below the feeder arm is helpful. Rooks can't then attack the nuts whilst perched on the arm, but starlings are still acrobatic enough to balance on the nuts and peck away. Recently, I have found a way to hang the nuts inside a globe-shaped 'guardian' (such as RSPB sold in conjunction with suet feeders). Tits get in very easily, but starlings can't perch on the nut. They instead perch on the inside lower rim of the feeder, and have to peck at the swinging coconut. They still get through a lot, but at least it has slowed the rate of consumption down! And, as they cannot so effectively clean out the shell, the tits have a better chance.

The birds love the coconut shell treats! They are the 2nd biggest hit at my feeding station (the 1st being buggy nibbles) Highly recommended by myself and my feathered friends ;-) The only trouble I have is my supplies run out quickly!

We have 3 feeding stations in our garden so I bought a coconut shell for each one, from the garden centre. One was much whiter than the others and that one was emptied in a day the other 2 looked greyer and eventually went mouldy and had to be thrown away. When I went back to the shop I realised the whiter one was and RSPB one, so I bought three of them. I soon had to order a bucket from the online shop!

I live in a 1st floor flat in central London with no garden or balcony. I previously put out a seed feeder - there were no takers. I hung one of these treats from a rspb window hook with no real expectation that I would attract any visitors. However they are a huge hit! Blue tits and great tits, in particular, love them.

Unfortunately I won't be buying these again. They are just TOO popular. The birds were getting through one or even two a day. Even if I were to buy in bulk this would cost me an absolute fortune. Sorry birds. Much as I love watching you devour these, I need to eat too.

these were brilliant and were very popular with the tits and chaffinches

Attracts all sorts of little birds to the garden. The blackbird hoovered up all the bits that fell out on to the ground so enjoyed it too. Even had a Robin pecking at it. The downside was that the squirrel loved it too and so did the Magpies and ate it in a couple of days. Also, probably due to the weight of the Squirrel and Magpies, the hessian rope broke and it fell on the ground and my dog licked out the last of the fat ball inside the shell.

Since I put these in my garden we have regularly had flocks of long tailed tits visiting the birdtable. Basically all birds love this, but be cautious and use tape or extra lace to tie it up very tightly because magpies may come and drop it off to the ground. Then it is quickly gone because doves and other large birds finish it quickly.

I bought the pack of shells and after just one day the tits and resident great spotted woodpecker started returning. We even started getting goldfinches - which after introducing nyjer seeds return everyday for breakfast and dinner! The only problem I have with the shells is that there is no way to prevent the blackbirds eating it who are now soooo greedy the shells have been finishing in less than a week and then they dig holes and destroy the flower beds. Am now looking for a caged alternative! Pls let me know when the guardian is back in stock! Thx

The Starlings and Great Tits in my garden love these. At the moment they are feeding their young and they are getting through one a day (as well as loads of other food)! They would probably get through more than one, but I only put one out a day. Absolutely no waste at all. When I put the first one up, they had no trouble finding it. It is lovely to watch the birds on them.