Fat Birds

I've always tried to attract birds into the garden during the winter months by hanging up tasty treats for them to eat in the trees and bushes. I've seen this as me adding a supplement to their normal diet of things they find themselves, in other words I help them though the winter months if they help themselves. Historically, it's pretty much been an amicable agreement... until this year. This winter they're eating me out of house and home! Seriously. They're getting through a bag of seed a every few days and seed isn't cheap (geddit?). I initially thought that it might be something else eating the food, maybe a squirrel or something but having watched over the last couple of days it's just hungry garden birds. I've had problems before, I used to have a bit of a problem with fat pigeons eating the seed, scaring off the other birds then pooping it out again all over the decking but solved this by showing them the sharp end of an air rifle. This time though it's just the volume of birds that's causing the food to go. Apart from making me ration the amount of seed I'm putting into the bird feeders it's also made me wonder why this is happening. Are there more birds this year, is something like global warming affecting the amount of food they can find on their own? Has the word got out that I'm a soft touch? Are they just getting lazy and depending on me for their food?

I would have thought that climate change would be increasing the amount of food available to birds. Surely warmer temperatures wouldn't kill off as many bugs and the wetter weather we're having should bring worms to the surface? God knows. All I know is that the birds of Lavendon are taking advantage of my hospitality and as much as I like seeing them, for financial reasons the kitchen's going to close, when the seed's gone, it's gone.