Bird feeding is the activity of feeding wild birds, often by means of

bird feeder A birdfeeder, bird table, or tray feeder are devices placed outdoors to supply bird food to birds ( bird feeding). The success of a bird feeder in attracting birds depends upon its placement and the kinds of foods offered, as different species ...

s. With a recorded history dating to the 6th century, the feeding of wild birds has been encouraged and celebrated in the United States and United Kingdom, with it being the United States' second most popular hobby having National Bird-Feeding Month congressionally decreed in 1994. Various types of food are provided by various methods; certain combinations of food and method of feeding are known to attract certain bird species. The feeding of wild birds has been shown to have possible negative as well as positive effects; while a study in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

, England found that the abundance of garden birds increased with levels of bird feeding, multiple reports suggest that bird feeding may have various negative ecological effects and may be detrimental to the birds being fed, including increased risk of predatory action and

malnutrition Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues ...

. It has been estimated that American adults spend approximately US$3.8 billion a year on food, feeders and related accessories.

History

The British naturalist

James Fisher James Fisher may refer to: Politics *James Fisher (physician) (died 1822), Scottish-born physician and politician in Lower Canada *James Hurtle Fisher (1790–1875), South Australian lawyer, first mayor of Adelaide *James Fisher (Wisconsin politic ...

wrote that the first person recorded as feeding wild birds was the 6th-century monk

Saint Serf Saint Serf or Serbán (''Servanus'') () is a saint of Scotland. Serf was venerated in western Fife. He is called the apostle of Orkney, with less historical plausibility. Saint Serf is connected with Saint Mungo's Church near Simonburn, Northumbe ...

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross ...

who tamed a pigeon by feeding it. During the harsh winter of 1890–1891 in the United Kingdom national newspapers asked people to put out food for birds. In 1910 in the United Kingdom, ''Punch'' magazine declared that feeding birds was a "national pastime."Moss, Stephen 2004 A bird in the bush. Aurum Press. p 102-103 Today in the United Kingdom, most people feed year-round, and enough food is provided to support the calorie requirements of the 10 most common garden bird species. Bird feeding has grown into the United States' second most popular hobby behind gardening.Richardson, Scott. "Feeding Time." ''Pantagraph'' loomington, IL31 January 2010. Print. In celebration of the bird feeding hobby, February was named National Bird-Feeding Month by congressional decree in 1994.

Activity

Bird feeding is typically thought of as an activity of bird enthusiasts. People who feed wild birds often attempt to attract birds to suburban and domestic locations. This requires setting up a feeding station and supplying bird food. The food might include seeds, peanuts, bought food mixes, fat, kitchen scraps and suet. Additionally, a bird bath and

grit Grit, Grits, or Gritty may refer to: Food * Grit (grain), bran, chaff, mill-dust or coarse oatmeal * Grits, a corn-based food common in the Southern United States Minerals * Grit, winter pavement-treatment minerals deployed in grit bins * ...

(sand), that birds store in their

crops A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydroponi ...

to help grind food as an aid to digestion, can be provided. Feeding bread to

waterfowl Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which i ...

at parks, lakes and rivers is also a popular activity.

Types

Certain

foods Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inges ...

tend to attract certain birds.

Finch The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where they are usua ...

es and siskin are attracted by

niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesjays prefer

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn ( North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. ...

Hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics ar ...

sunbird Sunbirds and spiderhunters make up the family Nectariniidae of passerine birds. They are small, slender passerines from the Old World, usually with downward-curved bills. Many are brightly coloured, often with iridescent feathers, particularly ...

s and other nectivorous birds seek nectar. Mixed seed and black-oil sunflower seed is favoured by many seed-eating species due to its high fat content and thin casing. In Australia, meat, especially raw beef mince (or ground beef), is commonly fed to wild carnivorous birds such as

Australian magpie The Australian magpie (''Gymnorhina tibicen'') is a black and white passerine bird native to Australia and southern New Guinea. Although once considered to be three separate species, it is now considered to be one, with nine recognised sub ...

s and kookaburras. Birds such as

white-eye The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the ...

s, barbets, and certain thrushes will consume fresh and cut fruit. Different feeders can be purchased specialized for different species. It is not only small birds that are attracted by bird feeding. In some urban areas of the UK,

red kite The red kite (''Milvus milvus'') is a medium-large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other Diurnality, diurnal Bird of prey, raptors such as eagles, buzzards, and harrier (bird), harriers. The species currently b ...

s are fed chicken and table scraps in gardens. Garden birds can be fed using peanuts, seed, coconut (but never desiccated coconut) or fat (but not oils that are liquid at room temperature) using a variety of feeders. After a station is established, it can take some weeks for birds to discover and start using it. This is particularly true if the feeding station is the first one in an area or (in cold-winter areas) if the station is being established in spring when natural sources of food are plentiful. Food, particularly unshelled foods, such as thistle seed and suet, left uneaten for too long may spoil. Birds also require a source of drinking water and a birdbath can attract birds as a feeding station. In North America, suet can be used to attract a variety of birds that may not reliably visit a bird feeder containing seeds. In Texas, all common species of

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar region ...

s will use a suet feeder year-round. In winter, yellow-rumped and orange-crowned warblers, golden-crowned kinglets and

northern flicker The northern flicker or common flicker (''Colaptes auratus'') is a medium-sized bird of the woodpecker family. It is native to most of North America, parts of Central America, Cuba, and the Cayman Islands, and is one of the few woodpecker spec ...

s could visit. In spring,

northern oriole The northern oriole (''Icterus galbula''), considered a species of North American bird from 1973 to 1995, brought together the eastern Baltimore oriole, ''Icterus galbula'', and the western Bullock's oriole Bullock's oriole (''Icterus bullockii' ...

and other warblers may also visit.

Impact

A study conducted in Sheffield, England, found that the abundance of garden birds increased with levels of bird feeding. This effect was only apparent in those species that regularly take supplementary food, raising the possibility that bird feeding was having a direct effect on bird abundance. In contrast, the density of feeding stations had no effect on the number of different bird species present in a neighbourhood.Fuller, R.A., Warren, P.H., Armsworth, P.R., Barbosa, O. & Gaston, K.J. 2008. Garden bird feeding predicts the structure of urban avian assemblages. Diversity & Distributions 14, 131–137. The use of bird feeders has been claimed to cause environmental problems; some of these were highlighted in a front-page article in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

''. Prior to the publication of ''The Wall Street Journal'' article, Canadian

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

Jason Rogers also wrote about the environmental problems associated with the use of bird feeders in the journal ''

Alberta Naturalist Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territ ...

''. In this article, Rogers explains how the practice of feeding wild birds is inherently fraught with negative impacts and risks such as fostering dependency, altering natural distribution,

density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematicall ...

and

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum l ...

patterns, interfering with ecological processes, causing malnutrition, facilitating the spread of disease and increasing the risk of death from cats,

pesticides Pesticides are substances that are meant to pest control, control pest (organism), pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microb ...

, hitting windows and other causes. In the UK, introduced

eastern gray squirrel The eastern gray squirrel (''Sciurus carolinensis''), also known, particularly outside of North America, as simply the grey squirrel, is a tree squirrel in the genus '' Sciurus''. It is native to eastern North America, where it is the most pro ...

s can consume significant volumes of food intended for birds. An experimental study providing supplementary food during the breeding season found that predation levels by corvids and eastern gray squirrels were higher when nests were located in close proximity to filled feeders. In a paper in the journal ''

Oecologia ''Oecologia'' is an international peer-reviewed English-language journal published by Springer since 1968 (some articles were published in German or French until 1976). The journal publishes original research in a range of topics related to plant ...

'', it was reported that feeding of blue tits and great tits with peanut cake over a long time period significantly reduced brood size. This was driven by smaller

clutch A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission, especially from a drive shaft to a driven shaft. In the simplest application, clutches connect and disconnect two rotating shafts (drive shafts or line shafts ...

sizes in both species and lower hatching success rates for blue tits. Studies by the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württe ...

and Environment Canada found that

blackcap The Eurasian blackcap (''Sylvia atricapilla''), usually known simply as the blackcap, is a common and widespread typical warbler. It has mainly olive-grey upperparts and pale grey underparts, and differences between the five subspecies are s ...

s migrating to Great Britain from Germany had become adapted to eating food supplied by humans. In contrast blackcaps migrating to Spain had bills adapted to feeding on fruit such as olives. Providing supplementary food at feeding stations may also change interactions with other species.

Aphid Aphids are small sap-sucking insects and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea. Common names include greenfly and blackfly, although individuals within a species can vary widely in color. The group includes the fluffy white woolly aphids. A ...

s and carabid beetles are more likely to be predated by birds near bird feeders.

Economy

Large sums of money are spent by ardent bird feeders, who indulge their wild birds with a variety of bird foods and bird feeders. Over 55 million Americans over the age of 16 feed wild birds and spend more than $3 billion a year on bird food, and $800 million a year on bird feeders, bird baths,

bird house Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight s ...

s and other bird feeding accessories."Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation–National Overview 2007." ''U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.'' 2006. The activity has spawned an industry that sells supplies and equipment for the bird feeding hobby. In some cities or parts of cities (e.g.

Trafalgar Square Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson commem ...

in London) feeding pigeons is activity discouraged by government, either because they compete with vulnerable native species, or because they abound and cause pollution and/or

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...

References

External links

Effects of bird-feeding activities on the health of wild birds.

The Impact of Wild Bird Feeding.Project FeederWatch
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bird Feeding Birds and humans Birds in culture cs:Krmítko