Solar Hanging Wild Bird Feeder

Garden feeders are usually a daytime pleasure that vanishes at four o'clock in December, which is precisely when most of us are actually sitting and looking out of the window. A solar top charges through whatever daylight there has been and gives off a soft glow once the light goes, so the feeder carries on doing something useful in the border long after the birds have gone off to roost.

The body is an environmentally friendly polymer in white, with a stainless steel hook so it can hang from a branch, a bracket or a shepherd's crook without rusting a brown stain down its own side over a winter. The open tray design suits mixed seed and the ground-feeding birds that will not use a tube. Blackbirds, robins and dunnocks in particular tend to ignore a hanging tube and take readily to an open tray.

• Open tray for mixed wild bird seed
• Solar-powered top that glows softly at dusk
• White environmentally friendly polymer body
• Stainless steel hanging hook
• Listed as 15 x 15 x 20
• No wiring and no batteries to replace

On the dimensions. An open tray also needs emptying and rinsing regularly, since wet seed spoils and a dirty feeder spreads disease between garden birds.

Who it's for: gardeners who feed wild birds year-round and would like the feeder to be worth looking at in the evening as well.