Robert Fuller's 'bird table with a difference' is designed to attract birds of prey.

Not normally classed as 'garden birds', wild falcons have become regular guests at the table at the bottom of his remote garden.

Smaller seed and insect-eating visitors such as house sparrows and blue tits, have had to learn to move over when these hunters arrive for dinner.

They include a kestrel in daylight hours and a barn owl and tawny owl at night.

Mr Fuller, whose garden is set deep in farmland in the Yorkshire Wolds, has adapted his bird table to accommodate these magnificent birds of prey alongside his usual feathered visitors.

To attract meat-eating company, Mr Fuller props dead chicks, mice and road kill, such as pheasant or rabbit, alongside the hanging seed feeders and scattered mealworms.

It makes for an edgy atmosphere around the table. But it works.

Friendly wrens and robins keep a wary eye out as they tuck into their daily seed rations, ready to move into nearby shrubbery and await the next course should a heavyweight arrive.

It all began in the autumn of 2006 when the wildlife artist spotted a male kestrel from his kitchen window hunting over a patch of rough grass on the edge of the garden, which edges onto farmland.

"The weather was getting worse each day and each time I saw the kestrel he was getting thinner, so I put a post up in the grass for him to hunt from," said Mr Fuller.

"The next day I caught a mouse in a trap and so I put it out on the post – it disappeared almost straight away, so I put out another the next day, and then another one the next.

"He soon became a regular visitor, sometimes coming up to four times a day." Mr Fuller's efforts were rewarded a year later when the kestrel began to bring a mate to the table.

Later that year, he discovered that food put out each evening for the kestrel's early morning feed was disappearing during the night.

"I kept watch with a torch one night from the kitchen window and sure enough a tawny owl appeared," he said.

Now a barn owl has joined the nightly tourists and Mr Fuller has rigged an alarm to wake him whenever he has visitors.

Mr Fuller orders in day-old chicks – cockerels from the hen laying industry – by the crate to feed his carnivorous feathered friends.

When he is away, friends take charge of the feeding. "Most people don't mind, so long as their wearing their marigolds," he said.

An artist, Mr Fuller paints directly from photographs that he takes of wildlife in action. "It's great to be able to watch these special birds from the comfort of my kitchen table," he explained.

More than 50 different species of birds visit the garden, including such rarities as twite, redstart and corn bunting, whilst Mr Fuller has counted over 35 breeding pairs of tree sparrow – a species that nationally is 92% in decline.