12 ms·

Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

62 points by cmsefton 5y ago

cmsefton 5y ago
The paper mentioned in the article, Killing with kindness: Does widespread generalised provisioning of wildlife help or hinder biodiversity conservation efforts?, can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320721003475?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...
- lucb1e 5y ago
  > can be found here For the low price of only $35.95! Not even sure it contains much. The abstract says (replacing some needlessly obscure words because not everyone's native language is english): > Direct effects upon [fed animals] have garnered most research interest, and are generally positive in leading to increased survival, productivity and hence population growth. However, we argue that the wider implications for [their non-fed] competitors, prey and predators are underappreciated and have the potential to generate pervasive negative impacts for biodiversity. "We argue"? Not like, "we show" or "our data shows"? A bit further into it: > Using a case study of UK garden bird food and nestbox provisioning, we hypothesise how well-intentioned [feeding] could be contributing to widespread ecological community change and homogenisation. I know the word hypothesise as basically meaning speculate or a theory yet to be investigated (and a dictionary agrees). I guess they do have some results from that case study, but with this tentative wording I'm not sure it's worth forking over thirty bucks to a publisher for no conclusions.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    FWIW, virtually nobody pays the sticker price for a single article. Many researchers have some kind of institutional access (e.g., through a library). If you don’t, shoot one of the authors an email and ask for a copy. Not only will they certainly send you one—-they don’t see a penny of that money—-but you’ll also make some harried grad student’s day.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Also assuming you went to university you probably have such access via its library as an alumnus/a, though not (at least in my case) remotely, would have to actually go in and access from the network. (I've never done so; I don't expect many people do, but especially living in the same city still I quite like the idea that in theory I can!)
    - watwut 5y ago
      Does not make the price not absurd. And then you have researchers who have to ask friend of friend or otherwise hunt down articles. These prices is how rich institutions gets even more advantage over those in less rich parts of world. And that is pretty much it.
      - mattkrause 5y ago
        The institution doesn't get that money: literally not a single dime of it goes to the authors, their departments, or their institutions. It goes to publishers. You don't need to be friends-of-friends either. Search for the authors and if the PDF is not on their webpages, shoot one of them an email. All it has to say is "I'm interested in your paper [title], but don't have access to [journal]. Could you send me a reprint/preprint? Thanks." It makes my day when people do this. Getting a paper published is a huge slog with overwhelmingly negative feedback, so it feels great to know that someone actually cares about what you wrote.
        lucb1e 5y ago
        > It makes my day when people do this. Getting a paper published is a huge slog with overwhelmingly negative feedback, so it feels great to know that someone actually cares about what you wrote. Wait, I don't get this. Probably this is very dumb, pardon my nonacademianess. My first thought is: then why don't you just host it on your own website? Then you can see exactly how many people download it. Heck, it could even be in an accessible HTML format (I'd love this instead of basically-image formats like PDF) and you can check if people leave the page after 5 seconds or if there are 30 minutes worth of mouse movement events. Not to say that you need to track this all identifiably, but the server could ingest "user still active on page" events and aggregate that per IP address or something until the session goes cold, then convert it to a mere "visitor #9001, stayed 27 minutes". I'm probably already overthinking this because I've never seen anyone host their own paper in the first place, nor any other format than PDF. Why doesn't anyone do that? Sending an email to request the paper is much slower than just having access (be that through sci-hub, a friend that you can see is online and whose university still supports the publisher system, etc.), so I don't think that's a good solution even if I understand perfectly why you love to hear of your readers. Imagine you had to email the authors of every link here on HN every time you think a headline sounds interesting; it's just not a solution to paywalls with ridiculous costs per article.
foxhop 5y ago
If you use Permaculture Principles you will exponentially grown biomass and animals including birds which visit your plot daily. I don't have a bird feeder and yet a huge variety of birds feed on my garden. It's just a matter of selectively sparing some plants over others. For example many small birds will eat kale and brasica seeds which are tiny and black like a poppy and each plant produces a huge abundance. Another favorite I noticed among the small birds is wild Lambs Quarter seeds, same thing, thousands of small seed per plant. And if you really can't help yourself, you could learn about animal husbandry and raise chickens for eggs, they love to have about 20% of their diet as scratch grains. I like to ferment and sprout the dried grains to make it easier for my hens digestion. Did you know chickens are omnivores and eat nearly all the same foods as humans? No wonder we keep them around, they literally eat all the left overs! For more details check out this video: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw
- birbs 5y ago
  The mechanism described in the article is that human assistance benefits more dominant species over less dominant ones, which increases the dominant species population and further suppresses the less dominant species. How is your garden fundamentally different than using a bird feeder regarding this specific interaction?
  - foxhop 5y ago
    The type and size of seed. Larger birds focus on larger (higher energy) seed sold at the stores. The plants I select to go to seed have small seeds and feed small birds. Just one of many observations I've had the pleasure of collecting anecdotal evidence on.
    - birbs 5y ago
      I don’t think the size of the bird is particularly relevant as birds of the same size compete for the same nesting sites. The article gives the example of blue tits dominating willow and marsh tits by hoarding the bird feeder and kicking them out of their nesting sites. Both the willow and marsh tit are slightly bigger than the blue tit. It seems to me that your garden would also have this issue.
11235813213455 5y ago
I often see people giving bread or other completely inappropriate food to birds in parcs or horses, chickens in small farms or ducks, swans, gallinules, fishes in estuaries I think we can also raise the problem in people diet as well, it's quite related. Our ideal food is plant-based, vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds, leaves, bulbs (eating raw garlic is incredible), that's what we're designed for chewing and digesting since million years edit: I can understand my comment is unpopular since I'm saying most people diet is inappropriate as well, but instead of rage downvoting, try to phrase why you disagree
- foxhop 5y ago
  My teenage son is a picky eater, still thinks unbleached wheat bread sandwich crust tastes bad. I used to feel like it was a waste to toss, still felt bad to compost, now that I feed the crust to my hens and see how they light up, I no longer feel bad. As for garlic in the raw, I'm glad you can eat that, I can as well but my wife absolutely cannot eat garlic even though she does enjoy the taste. If you really love garlic check out this authentic Italian process and techniques in this video, I was pleasantly surprised: https://youtu.be/NTSxnC7vCRc https://youtu.be/NTSxnC7vCRc
  - 11235813213455 5y ago
    I definitely prefer to eat garlic raw, you can let it in your mouth for a while, saliva will make it less strong. But cooking it is killing too much of its important macro-nutriments. I don't eat pastas or other starch because with experience I feel like they're "glueing" my digestive system and make digestion less efficient. My diet is mostly fruit currently (tons of free figs along my rides, persimmons, clementines, grapes), tomatoes from a local producer, all kind of edible plant leaves (e.g. common purslane, kale, onion leaves, leek leaves..), everything raw actually since many years. Even bell pepper, cucumbers, zucchinis I eat them "raw" (in quotes because technically fruits and this stuff are already somewhat cooked by the sun, and later by our digestive system), you can feel some taste that wouldn't exist anymore when they're cooked, it requires to chew more, and with time, the situation completely change, you don't like anymore cooked products It's great that you have a garden, I hope you'll grow some stuff. I was picky like your son when young, but fortunately I changed my diet later
lmilcin 5y ago
If these are migratory birds, then it is possible you are going to kill them by keeping them feeding while they should be migrating. We have this problem here in Poland Then you find birds dead because they are not adapted to surviving the winter.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Hum, I don't think so. Even with a few birds dying, as long as they are replenished routinely bird feeders are definitely good for winter survivorship in birds. Birds that evolved in Central Europe don't die by winter if they can find a constant supply of food. Can choose to do a shorter migration and overwinter in northern areas and this is good for the survival of young birds. Urban areas are warmer also. Migrating south is hazardous and exhausting and there are some places in the Mediterranean or Africa that are notoriously dangerous for birds when they are hunted massively.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    There is a lot of migratory birds that just can't survive winter, let alone harsh one, even when fed. Some have evolved in much warmer climate (a lot of migratory birds from Europe evolved in Africa) and never evolved to survive winter.
- dendodge 5y ago
  That's an interesting point. In the (UK) context of this study/article, blue tits and great tits (and indeed most garden birds) are generally non-migratory in the UK, so I think that's an orthogonal issue.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    To be fair bird movements are quite complicated: e.g. a Robin in the UK between September to March might be a member of a migratory or a non-migratory population. And Blackcaps are an example of a mostly migratory species in the UK but where less migratory individuals come to feeding stations in winter months.
- 5y ago
giuliomagnifico 5y ago
Interesting research…. …but don’t feed the garden birds will harm my mother brain healt, she is convinced that without her food those “poor little birds” will death! :)
- mcny 5y ago
  I like the short story “what men live by” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Men_Live_By https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Men_Live_By My conclusion from the story isn’t that we shouldn’t do our best but we shouldn’t worry. The universe existed before I was born and it will continue to exist after I am dead.
christophilus 5y ago
An alternative narrative: if feeders favor dominant/ bully birds, it might help the less dominant ones by freeing up just about every other spot in the area. If you knew the high school bullies were hanging out in the gym 90% of the time, the gym is actually helping you avoid the bullies (assuming you don’t have to go to the gym).
- Dumblydorr 5y ago
  But what if the bullies reproduced yearly? Wouldn't you want to reduce the bully's food supply?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- CalRobert 5y ago
  Maybe, but I suspect many of the birds I see around are made of the very food my wife puts out. Would be curious to see more study.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Our bullies here in London are ring-necked parakeets. They are the most bad-tempered birds on the feeder, preferring to peck at each other, and other birds, than to actually eat. I keep one feeder with a cage over it to give the smaller birds a chance. Luckily they only come mid morning and late afternoon, so again the other birds get to eat in peace. Spring and early summer we have breeding starlings who also cause a commotion on the feeder, but that is more of a good natured scrum, they eat very fast and disappear in seconds.
- birbs 5y ago
  Only in the short term. The additional food allows for additional bullies to survive, so now the bullies occupy their old stomping ground AND the bird feeder. And of course the new bullies need nesting sites that they’ll happily take from submissive birds.
- greenhatman 5y ago
Causality1 5y ago
One aspect not addressed is that birds using feeders are at increased risk of being killed by pet cats. Could this be offsetting the greater food supply?
- stinos 5y ago
  I don't think that is a generalisation which can easily be made. Many factors in play as well, e.g. imagine the situation where the birds normally have to be at about ground level to pick seeds, and one hangs a feeder on a washing line. The latter cannot be reached by cats, in the former situation the casts just have to wait for their possible meal to arrive. At the same time seeds drop from the feeder so birds going for that are an easier target for cats. But that's back to square one, so might not total to increased risk.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  We've had birds at our feeders killed by American Kestrels. One could view this as another layer of indirection in bird feeding.
airhead969 5y ago
What a dumb article.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
It develops bird-human relationships, and it makes up for all the lost biomass of insects.
oblak 5y ago
The birds that come to our feeder only care for the seeds when it's called. They bare come around during the summer. I guess insects are much tastier
gerdesj 5y ago
"A blue tit is a dominant species - it tends to win in interactions and fighting for food or quarrelling for nest sites," explains Dr Lees. "Whereas species like willow and marsh tits are subordinate. They tend to lose those in interactions." This doesn't quite square with what I recall was presented on a recent "Spring/Autumn watch". That's a BBC nature program - well respected and properly science focussed. It can get quite unpleasantly natural: for example it does not shy away from the effects of predation in all its gory forms. I recall that blue tits depend on a particular insect, which is or was currently scarce due to weather. Nests failed wholesale and second clutches didn't happen. So blue tits are currently having a bad year in the UK. Now, willow tits (I thought) majored in willow ... OK let's at least do a quick search: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/willow-tit/ https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/b... So where I live (Somerset) isn't in it's resident area. There's quite a lot of willow here and in Dorset to the south. I don't associate the midlands and Wales with willow, so there you go. Also I would have mis-identified one as a coal or great tit. So, given it was a shit year for blue tits - I've got off my arse again: https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildlife/countryside/a36603015/blue-tits-bad-year-springwatch/ https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildlife/countryside/a36603... what do you do? I suggest that in the first place, we feed the birds as best we can. To do that, the very best thing to do is provide the environment for insects and all the rest of the bottom of the food web to get cracking. We might also supplement that with caches of the sort of things that get a bird through tough times - dumps of seeds and fruits. I'd like to see way more research on these things and way more direction to willing civilians. For example is a "bee motel" really helpful and why? What can we do for blue tits - please read the section "WHY ARE THERE LESS BLUE TIT NESTS THIS YEAR? THE SCIENCE EXPLAINS". It turns out the current years decline is complicated and the blue tit does not seem to be very generalised or able to adapt. Worrying about blue tits being bullies seems a bit crass when the poor buggers are having a pretty shit time. Willow tits - no idea how they are doing this year. Perhaps they are seeing a resurgence now that blue tits are laid low.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comment. I think most birds are not having a great time these days, between losing habitat and losing insects/biomass. We are still thinking of nature and animals as being self-sustaining, the way they have been in the past, but more and more it's becoming apparent that we have to not only reduce harm, but also step in and help, to become true caretakers of the biome.
User23 5y ago
Titmice used to be famous for picking the foil off the jugs the milkman delivered.
Johnny555 5y ago
I usually only feed birds during unseasonable weather (either unseasonably cold, or a rare snow which I figure covers much of the ground where they'd usually find food). The rest of the time I presume they can find food on their own. Surprisingly, it takes only a couple of days before dozens of birds find the food. I put out a birdbath when we had an unusual heat wave, but didn't see any birds using it, though we had some squirrels stop by in the daytime, and a raccoon family visited at night to get a drink.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  I put in a new birdbath and it took two years for birds to "find" it. Now they're there daily. I don't know why, but if I had to guess it's a new generation of birds without no set habits that found it.

62 points by cmsefton 5y ago

The paper mentioned in the article, Killing with kindness: Does widespread generalised provisioning of wildlife help or hinder biodiversity conservation efforts?, can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320721003475?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...

lucb1e 5y ago
> can be found here For the low price of only $35.95! Not even sure it contains much. The abstract says (replacing some needlessly obscure words because not everyone's native language is english): > Direct effects upon [fed animals] have garnered most research interest, and are generally positive in leading to increased survival, productivity and hence population growth. However, we argue that the wider implications for [their non-fed] competitors, prey and predators are underappreciated and have the potential to generate pervasive negative impacts for biodiversity. "We argue"? Not like, "we show" or "our data shows"? A bit further into it: > Using a case study of UK garden bird food and nestbox provisioning, we hypothesise how well-intentioned [feeding] could be contributing to widespread ecological community change and homogenisation. I know the word hypothesise as basically meaning speculate or a theory yet to be investigated (and a dictionary agrees). I guess they do have some results from that case study, but with this tentative wording I'm not sure it's worth forking over thirty bucks to a publisher for no conclusions.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  FWIW, virtually nobody pays the sticker price for a single article. Many researchers have some kind of institutional access (e.g., through a library). If you don’t, shoot one of the authors an email and ask for a copy. Not only will they certainly send you one—-they don’t see a penny of that money—-but you’ll also make some harried grad student’s day.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Also assuming you went to university you probably have such access via its library as an alumnus/a, though not (at least in my case) remotely, would have to actually go in and access from the network. (I've never done so; I don't expect many people do, but especially living in the same city still I quite like the idea that in theory I can!)
  - watwut 5y ago
    Does not make the price not absurd. And then you have researchers who have to ask friend of friend or otherwise hunt down articles. These prices is how rich institutions gets even more advantage over those in less rich parts of world. And that is pretty much it.
    - mattkrause 5y ago
      The institution doesn't get that money: literally not a single dime of it goes to the authors, their departments, or their institutions. It goes to publishers. You don't need to be friends-of-friends either. Search for the authors and if the PDF is not on their webpages, shoot one of them an email. All it has to say is "I'm interested in your paper [title], but don't have access to [journal]. Could you send me a reprint/preprint? Thanks." It makes my day when people do this. Getting a paper published is a huge slog with overwhelmingly negative feedback, so it feels great to know that someone actually cares about what you wrote.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
        > It makes my day when people do this. Getting a paper published is a huge slog with overwhelmingly negative feedback, so it feels great to know that someone actually cares about what you wrote. Wait, I don't get this. Probably this is very dumb, pardon my nonacademianess. My first thought is: then why don't you just host it on your own website? Then you can see exactly how many people download it. Heck, it could even be in an accessible HTML format (I'd love this instead of basically-image formats like PDF) and you can check if people leave the page after 5 seconds or if there are 30 minutes worth of mouse movement events. Not to say that you need to track this all identifiably, but the server could ingest "user still active on page" events and aggregate that per IP address or something until the session goes cold, then convert it to a mere "visitor #9001, stayed 27 minutes". I'm probably already overthinking this because I've never seen anyone host their own paper in the first place, nor any other format than PDF. Why doesn't anyone do that? Sending an email to request the paper is much slower than just having access (be that through sci-hub, a friend that you can see is online and whose university still supports the publisher system, etc.), so I don't think that's a good solution even if I understand perfectly why you love to hear of your readers. Imagine you had to email the authors of every link here on HN every time you think a headline sounds interesting; it's just not a solution to paywalls with ridiculous costs per article.

foxhop 5y ago

If you use Permaculture Principles you will exponentially grown biomass and animals including birds which visit your plot daily. I don't have a bird feeder and yet a huge variety of birds feed on my garden. It's just a matter of selectively sparing some plants over others. For example many small birds will eat kale and brasica seeds which are tiny and black like a poppy and each plant produces a huge abundance. Another favorite I noticed among the small birds is wild Lambs Quarter seeds, same thing, thousands of small seed per plant. And if you really can't help yourself, you could learn about animal husbandry and raise chickens for eggs, they love to have about 20% of their diet as scratch grains. I like to ferment and sprout the dried grains to make it easier for my hens digestion. Did you know chickens are omnivores and eat nearly all the same foods as humans? No wonder we keep them around, they literally eat all the left overs! For more details check out this video: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw

birbs 5y ago
The mechanism described in the article is that human assistance benefits more dominant species over less dominant ones, which increases the dominant species population and further suppresses the less dominant species. How is your garden fundamentally different than using a bird feeder regarding this specific interaction?
- foxhop 5y ago
  The type and size of seed. Larger birds focus on larger (higher energy) seed sold at the stores. The plants I select to go to seed have small seeds and feed small birds. Just one of many observations I've had the pleasure of collecting anecdotal evidence on.
  - birbs 5y ago
    I don’t think the size of the bird is particularly relevant as birds of the same size compete for the same nesting sites. The article gives the example of blue tits dominating willow and marsh tits by hoarding the bird feeder and kicking them out of their nesting sites. Both the willow and marsh tit are slightly bigger than the blue tit. It seems to me that your garden would also have this issue.

11235813213455 5y ago

I often see people giving bread or other completely inappropriate food to birds in parcs or horses, chickens in small farms or ducks, swans, gallinules, fishes in estuaries I think we can also raise the problem in people diet as well, it's quite related. Our ideal food is plant-based, vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds, leaves, bulbs (eating raw garlic is incredible), that's what we're designed for chewing and digesting since million years edit: I can understand my comment is unpopular since I'm saying most people diet is inappropriate as well, but instead of rage downvoting, try to phrase why you disagree

foxhop 5y ago
My teenage son is a picky eater, still thinks unbleached wheat bread sandwich crust tastes bad. I used to feel like it was a waste to toss, still felt bad to compost, now that I feed the crust to my hens and see how they light up, I no longer feel bad. As for garlic in the raw, I'm glad you can eat that, I can as well but my wife absolutely cannot eat garlic even though she does enjoy the taste. If you really love garlic check out this authentic Italian process and techniques in this video, I was pleasantly surprised: https://youtu.be/NTSxnC7vCRc https://youtu.be/NTSxnC7vCRc
- 11235813213455 5y ago
  I definitely prefer to eat garlic raw, you can let it in your mouth for a while, saliva will make it less strong. But cooking it is killing too much of its important macro-nutriments. I don't eat pastas or other starch because with experience I feel like they're "glueing" my digestive system and make digestion less efficient. My diet is mostly fruit currently (tons of free figs along my rides, persimmons, clementines, grapes), tomatoes from a local producer, all kind of edible plant leaves (e.g. common purslane, kale, onion leaves, leek leaves..), everything raw actually since many years. Even bell pepper, cucumbers, zucchinis I eat them "raw" (in quotes because technically fruits and this stuff are already somewhat cooked by the sun, and later by our digestive system), you can feel some taste that wouldn't exist anymore when they're cooked, it requires to chew more, and with time, the situation completely change, you don't like anymore cooked products It's great that you have a garden, I hope you'll grow some stuff. I was picky like your son when young, but fortunately I changed my diet later

lmilcin 5y ago

If these are migratory birds, then it is possible you are going to kill them by keeping them feeding while they should be migrating. We have this problem here in Poland Then you find birds dead because they are not adapted to surviving the winter.

pvaldes 5y ago
Hum, I don't think so. Even with a few birds dying, as long as they are replenished routinely bird feeders are definitely good for winter survivorship in birds. Birds that evolved in Central Europe don't die by winter if they can find a constant supply of food. Can choose to do a shorter migration and overwinter in northern areas and this is good for the survival of young birds. Urban areas are warmer also. Migrating south is hazardous and exhausting and there are some places in the Mediterranean or Africa that are notoriously dangerous for birds when they are hunted massively.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  There is a lot of migratory birds that just can't survive winter, let alone harsh one, even when fed. Some have evolved in much warmer climate (a lot of migratory birds from Europe evolved in Africa) and never evolved to survive winter.
dendodge 5y ago
That's an interesting point. In the (UK) context of this study/article, blue tits and great tits (and indeed most garden birds) are generally non-migratory in the UK, so I think that's an orthogonal issue.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  To be fair bird movements are quite complicated: e.g. a Robin in the UK between September to March might be a member of a migratory or a non-migratory population. And Blackcaps are an example of a mostly migratory species in the UK but where less migratory individuals come to feeding stations in winter months.
5y ago

giuliomagnifico 5y ago

Interesting research…. …but don’t feed the garden birds will harm my mother brain healt, she is convinced that without her food those “poor little birds” will death! :)

mcny 5y ago
I like the short story “what men live by” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Men_Live_By https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Men_Live_By My conclusion from the story isn’t that we shouldn’t do our best but we shouldn’t worry. The universe existed before I was born and it will continue to exist after I am dead.

christophilus 5y ago

An alternative narrative: if feeders favor dominant/ bully birds, it might help the less dominant ones by freeing up just about every other spot in the area. If you knew the high school bullies were hanging out in the gym 90% of the time, the gym is actually helping you avoid the bullies (assuming you don’t have to go to the gym).

Dumblydorr 5y ago
But what if the bullies reproduced yearly? Wouldn't you want to reduce the bully's food supply?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
CalRobert 5y ago
Maybe, but I suspect many of the birds I see around are made of the very food my wife puts out. Would be curious to see more study.
beardyw 5y ago
Our bullies here in London are ring-necked parakeets. They are the most bad-tempered birds on the feeder, preferring to peck at each other, and other birds, than to actually eat. I keep one feeder with a cage over it to give the smaller birds a chance. Luckily they only come mid morning and late afternoon, so again the other birds get to eat in peace. Spring and early summer we have breeding starlings who also cause a commotion on the feeder, but that is more of a good natured scrum, they eat very fast and disappear in seconds.
birbs 5y ago
Only in the short term. The additional food allows for additional bullies to survive, so now the bullies occupy their old stomping ground AND the bird feeder. And of course the new bullies need nesting sites that they’ll happily take from submissive birds.
greenhatman 5y ago

Causality1 5y ago

One aspect not addressed is that birds using feeders are at increased risk of being killed by pet cats. Could this be offsetting the greater food supply?

stinos 5y ago
I don't think that is a generalisation which can easily be made. Many factors in play as well, e.g. imagine the situation where the birds normally have to be at about ground level to pick seeds, and one hangs a feeder on a washing line. The latter cannot be reached by cats, in the former situation the casts just have to wait for their possible meal to arrive. At the same time seeds drop from the feeder so birds going for that are an easier target for cats. But that's back to square one, so might not total to increased risk.
pfdietz 5y ago
We've had birds at our feeders killed by American Kestrels. One could view this as another layer of indirection in bird feeding.

airhead969 5y ago

What a dumb article.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

It develops bird-human relationships, and it makes up for all the lost biomass of insects.

oblak 5y ago

The birds that come to our feeder only care for the seeds when it's called. They bare come around during the summer. I guess insects are much tastier

gerdesj 5y ago

"A blue tit is a dominant species - it tends to win in interactions and fighting for food or quarrelling for nest sites," explains Dr Lees. "Whereas species like willow and marsh tits are subordinate. They tend to lose those in interactions." This doesn't quite square with what I recall was presented on a recent "Spring/Autumn watch". That's a BBC nature program - well respected and properly science focussed. It can get quite unpleasantly natural: for example it does not shy away from the effects of predation in all its gory forms. I recall that blue tits depend on a particular insect, which is or was currently scarce due to weather. Nests failed wholesale and second clutches didn't happen. So blue tits are currently having a bad year in the UK. Now, willow tits (I thought) majored in willow ... OK let's at least do a quick search: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/willow-tit/ https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/b... So where I live (Somerset) isn't in it's resident area. There's quite a lot of willow here and in Dorset to the south. I don't associate the midlands and Wales with willow, so there you go. Also I would have mis-identified one as a coal or great tit. So, given it was a shit year for blue tits - I've got off my arse again: https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildlife/countryside/a36603015/blue-tits-bad-year-springwatch/ https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildlife/countryside/a36603... what do you do? I suggest that in the first place, we feed the birds as best we can. To do that, the very best thing to do is provide the environment for insects and all the rest of the bottom of the food web to get cracking. We might also supplement that with caches of the sort of things that get a bird through tough times - dumps of seeds and fruits. I'd like to see way more research on these things and way more direction to willing civilians. For example is a "bee motel" really helpful and why? What can we do for blue tits - please read the section "WHY ARE THERE LESS BLUE TIT NESTS THIS YEAR? THE SCIENCE EXPLAINS". It turns out the current years decline is complicated and the blue tit does not seem to be very generalised or able to adapt. Worrying about blue tits being bullies seems a bit crass when the poor buggers are having a pretty shit time. Willow tits - no idea how they are doing this year. Perhaps they are seeing a resurgence now that blue tits are laid low.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comment. I think most birds are not having a great time these days, between losing habitat and losing insects/biomass. We are still thinking of nature and animals as being self-sustaining, the way they have been in the past, but more and more it's becoming apparent that we have to not only reduce harm, but also step in and help, to become true caretakers of the biome.

User23 5y ago

Titmice used to be famous for picking the foil off the jugs the milkman delivered.

Johnny555 5y ago

I usually only feed birds during unseasonable weather (either unseasonably cold, or a rare snow which I figure covers much of the ground where they'd usually find food). The rest of the time I presume they can find food on their own. Surprisingly, it takes only a couple of days before dozens of birds find the food. I put out a birdbath when we had an unusual heat wave, but didn't see any birds using it, though we had some squirrels stop by in the daytime, and a raccoon family visited at night to get a drink.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
I put in a new birdbath and it took two years for birds to "find" it. Now they're there daily. I don't know why, but if I had to guess it's a new generation of birds without no set habits that found it.