Top 10 Things to Do for Garden Birds Over the Christmas Break (UK)

Updated 30 October 2026 · 8 min read

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Quick answer

Between Christmas Day and New Year is the best week of the year to sort out your garden for birds. You’re at home, the weather is often cold enough to make small jobs feel worthwhile, and everything you do now — cleaning feeders, planting a bare-root shrub, cleaning a nest box, saving windfall apples, signing up for Big Garden Birdwatch — pays back for the rest of the winter and into spring.

Christmas Day: topped-up feeders, unfrozen water, safe leftovers.
Boxing Day: the day for a proper feeder clean.
Between Christmas & New Year: plant, prune, put up boxes.
New Year: sign up for Big Garden Birdwatch.
Legal window: nest boxes can be cleaned 1 Sept–31 Jan; don’t disturb active nests.

1. Deep-clean every feeder

By late December, feeders that have been up since November are due a proper wash. Empty them, wash in warm soapy water with a bottle brush, rinse and dry fully. Do the tray, the perches, the lids — droppings collect everywhere. The RSPB’s current advice is weekly cleaning; Boxing Day is a good day to reset the schedule.

2. Save windfall apples from the fruit bowl

Any apples going soft in the bowl (or the Christmas fruit basket) are gold for blackbirds, thrushes, redwings and fieldfares — especially in the cold snap that so often falls between Christmas and New Year. Halve them and put them out on the lawn, on a fruit spike, or spike them onto a hedge branch.

3. Feed the right Christmas leftovers

Not everything from the Christmas table is bird food, but a lot is. Suitable: unsalted plain roast potatoes, pastry crumbs, mild grated cheese, plain rice, unsalted oats, crumbs of Christmas pudding without alcohol, unsalted breadcrumbs (in small amounts). Not suitable: salted crisps, salted nuts, gravy, cooked fat from a joint, anything with a lot of butter, anything with chocolate.

Christmas pudding, mince pies, panettone, stollen and Christmas cake all contain sultanas, raisins and currants — toxic to dogs. Keep them out of reach.

4. Break the ice every morning

Bird baths, water dishes and shallow puddles freeze fast between Christmas and Twelfth Night. A jug of warm water tips out the ice and refills the bath in seconds. In really deep cold, bring one dish inside overnight and put it out in the morning. Never use salt, glycerine or antifreeze.

5. Clean out old nests from nest boxes

Between 1 September and 31 January you can legally clean an old nest out of a box. Wear gloves, tip the contents onto the compost heap, scald the box with boiling water, dry fully, add a small handful of clean wood shavings and put it back up. Wrens, tits and sparrows will roost in it on cold January nights.

6. Plant a bare-root berry shrub

December to March is bare-root planting season, when tiny “whips” of native hedge plants — hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, holly, dog rose — cost a fraction of container plants. Order online for delivery in the New Year, or pick up at a hedging nursery on 27 or 28 December. A single hawthorn will feed birds for decades.

7. Trim (don’t cut down) a hedge

Late December to mid-February is the right window for hedge work in the UK. Once berries have been stripped and before birds start nesting in March, you can shape a hedge without breaking wildlife law. Leave one section untrimmed to hold onto berries and thick cover.

8. Make one homemade fat cake

A cheap tub of lard, a handful of sunflower hearts, chopped unsalted peanuts and grated mild cheese, melted together and set in a yoghurt pot with string threaded through, becomes a fat cake that starlings and blackcaps will demolish. It’s the classic post-Christmas afternoon craft with kids or grandkids.

9. Sign up for Big Garden Birdwatch

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch runs over one weekend in late January. Registration is free on the RSPB website and opens from December. Spend an hour any time that weekend counting the highest number of each species you see at once, then submit the numbers online. It’s the world’s biggest garden wildlife survey and it takes almost no time at all.

10. Start a garden bird list for the New Year

On 1 January, open a notebook or a note on your phone and write down every species you see in the garden through the year. It sounds tiny; it turns into something you look forward to. Twenty species in a small urban garden by 31 December is a good target. Add columns for first-seen date and how many, and you’ll have a proper record by next Christmas.

Quiet moment: at any point over the break, spend fifteen minutes with a mug of tea by a window facing the garden. Not counting, not photographing. Just watching. It’s the reason all the other jobs are worth doing.

Seasonal reminder: under RSPB guidance, seed and peanuts are paused from 1 May to 31 October, so through the Christmas break you’re in full feeding season. Fresh food, fresh water and clean feeders make the biggest difference of the year.

Browse sunflower hearts → US price → Browse cleaning kits → US price →

Common questions

Can birds eat Christmas cake?

The dried fruit, alcohol, marzipan and icing make it a poor choice. A tiny amount of plain sponge is harmless.

Can I feed birds turkey?

Small amounts of plain, unsalted, unseasoned turkey meat and the cooled cooking juices (not the salty gravy) are fine. Skip anything roasted with butter, oil or salt.

Is it too late to put up a nest box in January?

No — mid-February is when blue and great tits start prospecting, so a box up by early February is well in time.

What if I’m away for New Year?

Ask a neighbour to top up feeders every couple of days, and if that’s not possible, taper the feeding down over the days before you go rather than stopping suddenly.

Related guides

Sources: RSPB garden bird feeding guidance (April 2026 update); RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch; BTO Garden BirdWatch; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; RSPCA guidance on foods toxic to dogs.