I suspect that, like me, you made sure your bird feeders were well stocked before the blizzard that hit on February 8 and 9.\u00a0 Our feeders were pretty busy all through the blizzard.\u00a0 Clearly, birds readily accept our handouts.<\/p>\n
Have you ever thought about the ethics of bird feeding?\u00a0 Is it OK if your bird feeder becomes empty for a while this winter?\u00a0 I get asked this last question quite a lot by people who plan to be away for part of the winter, depriving their local birds of a formerly constant source of food. \u00a0Are we doing our feeder birds harm by giving them food and then taking it away?\u00a0 In other words, do our feeder birds become dependent on bird feeders?<\/p>\n
To cut to the chase, local birds do not become dependent on feeders.\u00a0 One should not worry about a feeder becoming empty when high winds of a blizzard blow your feeder to the ground or when birds deplete the food while you are away.<\/p>\n
We do know that feeding the birds increases winter survivorship.\u00a0 The best information for this effect concerns Black-capped Chickadees from studies conducted in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ontario.<\/p>\n
To investigate if birds do become dependent on handouts form humans, Stanley Temple and Margaret Brittingham performed an intriguing experiment.\u00a0 These two scientists extended their earlier work showing that winter bird feeding improved chickadee winter survival.\u00a0 Their next step was a study to compare winter survival of chickadees between two areas.\u00a0 In one area, chickadees had been given sunflower seeds continuously for several years.\u00a0 In the second area, no bird feeders were ever present.\u00a0 The authors took away the bird feeders from the first area where birds had been feeding on sunflower seeds for years and monitored winter survivorship.<\/p>\n
If the population given sunflower seeds in previous years had a lower survivorship than the population with no bird feeders, one could claim that the birds in the first area had become dependent on the sunflower seeds.\u00a0 But there was no difference in survivorship for the two populations.\u00a0 The previously fed chickadees did as well in the following year feeding on natural food as the unfed chickadees did.<\/p>\n
Similar studies have not been done for other North American species that frequent feeders but I expect that results would be similar.\u00a0 Depending on a single source of food is risky for any winter bird.\u00a0 Winter songbirds commonly range over areas of 10 to 25 acres.\u00a0 Much of this area is regularly patrolled and food is taken from a number of different parts of their winter area.<\/p>\n
Bird feeding has a number of effects.\u00a0 It brings birds close to our homes where we can enjoy them from the comfort of our kitchen or living room.\u00a0 Bird feeding has strong effects on the birds as well.\u00a0 In addition to increasing survivorship, bird feeding has certainly facilitated the expansion of a number of birds.\u00a0 In the state of Maine, House Finches are rarely found far from feeders.\u00a0 Tufted Titmice have been steadily expanding their range northward over the past 20 years, undoubtedly aided by the provision of food during the winter at bird feeders.\u00a0 These birds regularly occur \u00a0in central Maine now and I have even seen one in the winter at the north end of Flagstaff Lake.\u00a0 Mourning Doves, Northern Cardinals and Carolina Wrens fall in the same category of birds expanding their range northward.<\/p>\n
We know that bird feeders can change the habitat preference of birds.\u00a0 For instance, American Goldfinches in the absence of bird feeders are equally likely to be found in areas dominated by coniferous forest, areas dominated by deciduous forest and areas we can classify as \u201cedge\u201d habitats (suburban areas, fields reverting to forest).\u00a0 However, the goldfinches will quickly forsake forest habitat for edge habitat if one puts up bird feeders in the edge habitat.<\/p>\n
[First published on February 17, 2013]<\/p>\n\n
I suspect that, like me, you made sure your bird feeders were well stocked before the blizzard that hit on February 8 and 9.\u00a0 Our feeders were pretty busy all through the blizzard.\u00a0 Clearly, birds readily accept our handouts. Have you ever thought about the ethics of bird feeding?\u00a0 Is it OK if your bird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4625,432],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}