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  THE BIRDS AT MY TABLE

  THE BIRDS AT MY TABLE

  Why We Feed Wild Birds and Why It Matters

  DARRYL JONES

  A NewSouth book

  Published by

  NewSouth Publishing

  University of New South Wales Press Ltd

  University of New South Wales

  Sydney NSW 2052

  AUSTRALIA

  newsouthpublishing.com

  © 2018 by Cornell University

  First published 2018 by Cornell University Press

  Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  ISBN 9781742235974 (paperback)

  9781742244235 (ebook)

  9781742248653 (ePDF)

  Cover design Scott Levine

  This book is dedicated to Renee Chapman,

  Dave Clark, and Josie Galbraith.

  Pioneering a new look at an old practice.

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1.Why Bird Feeding Matters

  2.Crumbs to Corporations: The Extraordinary History and Growth of Bird Feeding

  3.The Big Change: Winter or Always?

  4.The Feeder Effect: What All That Food Can Do

  5.What Happens When We Feed? Insights from Supplementary Feeding Studies

  6.Tainted Table? Can Feeding Make Birds Sick?

  7.Feeding for a Purpose: Supplementary Feeding as Conservation

  8.Reasons Why We Feed Wild Birds

  9.Bird Feeding Matters Even More Now: The Promise and Risks of a Global Phenomenon

  Appendix: Species Mentioned in the Text

  Notes

  References

  Index

  PREFACE

  We love to feed birds. This very day, people throughout the world, from all walks of life, will willingly provide food for wild birds. The foods they offer may vary from discarded food scraps to elaborate home-prepared mixtures or expensively marketed products. These may be simply tossed onto the back lawn or presented via a complex system of tubes and platforms. Such activities may be as casual as a whim or undertaken with a specific goal in mind; they may be part of a vaguely regular routine or a carefully planned strategy. Whatever the process, the central idea is much the same: to provide food for wild creatures, usually close to home. It is often an intimate encounter; we are inviting birds to share our table.

  For many of us this can be a profoundly moving experience, an almost magical interaction with nature. Providing food may also be a gesture of care, a heartfelt form of humane assistance to apparently fragile and vulnerable creatures. Lots of people feed birds as a way of aiding their welfare or their preservation, while others simply enjoy seeing wild animals close up. And there are a multitude of other reasons and motivations for feeding, some so obvious that they seem hardly worth mentioning. Feeding birds can be a simple, straightforward pastime as well as something deeply personal we may find difficult to explain.

  For many of us, the most important aspect of feeding wild birds seems to be the experience, the improbable opportunity to see and interact closely with real wild animals. This sometimes involves feeding an un-tamed, untrained, free-flying bird directly by hand. Such an experience is frequently described with words of genuine personal emotion: “privilege, “awe,” “moving.” More typically, the interaction is a bit more remote yet no less significant: seeing a group of wild creatures heartily partaking of the provisions we have supplied can be genuinely gratifying. These experiences may be different for each person, location, season, and setting. It can change day to day, even hour by hour; that’s a key part of the pleasure and delight. Our regular visitors may always be right on schedule, but an unexpected arrival by an altogether unfamiliar species can be an exciting surprise. Keeping at least one eye on the feeder is always a good idea if you have the time; you never know what you might miss!

  It’s easy to see why this very popular pastime can become an obsession: the pleasure associated with seeing—and providing for—these special visitors each day, with attracting a rare or unexpected species and feeling that you are contributing to the health or continued survival of precious creatures. For some people, these simple pleasures may also become something of an obligation, a daily commitment to uninterrupted provisioning. This dedication—or compulsion—raises some significant questions that also need to be considered. What would happen to the birds if we couldn’t provide these supplies regularly? Would they be able to cope? Would they have to move elsewhere? And might they have become dependent on our handouts?

  This book is an exploration of this fascinating, complex, simple, sometimes compulsive human activity. It is also a serious attempt to understand the reasons why people feed wild birds and a consideration of the possible consequences. One way to start this journey is to visit some bird feeders from around the world as we attempt to unravel this popular, global activity.

  It is early morning on November 1, and feeders are getting ready for the day’s arrivals . . .

  Maine, USA. The first day of November has brought some unexpect- edly snowy weather to the Tilleys’ well-treed garden in the hills of northern Maine. Up at dawn as always, Janice Tilley is surprised by the dusting of new snow that greets her, but she is well prepared. “Time for my special gorp,” she announces proudly, retrieving several string bags of her own concoction (made from a well-guarded family recipe) from the battered fridge in the garden shed. “All I will tell you is that I add seven ingredients to the lard, including walnuts and grape jelly. And the nuthatches love it!” Winter is always tough for the birds that don’t escape the cold. “The fat really seems to help; they scoff at the sweet bits, but it’s the lard that builds them up. I honestly think that my winter provisions are keeping a whole bunch of chickadees alive till spring.”

  Gwynedd, Wales. For Jim Griffith, who lives on “the windy side” of the Snowdonia Mountains in northern Wales, filling his collection of homemade “little house” feeders is now a daily preoccupation. The wintry winds have seen off many of his fair-weather visitors, but he still has a solemn duty in providing for some diminutive and secretive residents, a pair of robins, as well as some special new arrivals. “They might look delicate, but these redbreasts—they’re tough little blighters,” says Jim, who has watched them taking turns to feast on the mealworms and peanut cake he replenishes every day at 6 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. “My robins live right here,” he says, “but the siskins seem to come in from the woods just for the thistle seeds.” Today he waits, broom in hand, by his back door, to ensure that his favored clients are not disturbed by the unwelcome and “downright brazen” jays. “The robins are my most reliable friends these days,” Jim states quietly. “I don’t know what I would do without them.”

  Wellington, New Zealand. Early November weather is typically unpre- dictable in Wellington, at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand, even though it is supposed to be summer. “Sunny with a bloody good chance of rain,” jokes Susie McGan, though her frustration is evident. The frequent showers are seriously disrupting her attempts to draw in the Tuis, one of the native sweet-toothed species that flock to her simple sugar-water feeder. There are always plenty of Waxeyes [Silvereyes] and the ubiquitous House Sparrows, but it’s the Tui that Susie really enjoys. “So full of life and energy, they always fill me with joy.” Here, providing regular seed attracts a r
emarkable variety of introduced species such as Goldfinches, turtle-doves and sparrows. “I love them all, I really do,” she explains, “It’s just that these Tui were really rare so recently. It’s such a blessing to have them coming to visit now. By offering a little something that they appear to enjoy, I seem to be offering hope—hope that we might be able to restore some of the damage we humans have done. Well, the return of the Tuis makes it seem possible.”

  Brisbane, Australia. November in humid Queensland typically means occasional wild, thundery summer storms with brief periods of ferocious rain, followed almost immediately by blinding sunshine. It’s a backdrop that seems entirely appropriate to the spectacular primary-colored plumage of the most conspicuous visitors to my humble seed platform. Rainbow Lorikeets seem improbably exotic to have become the most abundant bird in most of Australia’s larger cities. Loud, excitable, and extroverted, pairs of these gaudy parrots now dominate my feeding station, although they also tend to feast and fly fairly quickly. This allows the less pushy species—rosellas, magpies, doves, and honeyeaters—a chance to taste what remains. All these birds are common and widespread, clearly not needing assistance because of climate or conservation. “Feeding is folly,” according to my otherwise friendly neighbor, Richard. “All you are doing is encouraging the dictatorial!” he regularly admonishes. “All these species are dominators; the smaller birds we are trying to attract by plantings don’t have a chance with these bullies around!” He has a point, and he is not alone in expressing these forthright views. Why do I feed? It’s got something to do with connecting with nature, I think, but I’ll need to give this some careful thought.

  These vignettes offer a small but informative glimpse into the com-plexities of what is usually regarded as a simple, often strictly private, pastime. Each of these situations is typical, even commonplace, yet they also introduce some of the personal—and sometimes universal—issues associated with feeding. What to provide as food and when to provide it? Should the food change with the seasons? What to do about unwelcome visitors (including the greedy [insert local villain species] that chase our favorites away? Is my feeding disrupting the natural balance, or is it replacing something that has been lost? And, really, why do we do this anyway?

  Feeding wild birds is very popular. A number of surveys from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia consistently report that sizable proportions (often about half) of households are engaged in some form of feeding.1 That’s a lot of people providing a lot of bird food. This food may be table scraps, picnic leftovers, homemade products such as suet balls, or commercial seed mixtures. The most regular form of feeding takes place at home, in gardens, yards, or balco-nies, usually with the food offered in locations that allow the birds to be viewed clearly. In addition, a popular form of wild bird feeding occurs in public spaces such as urban parks and recreational areas. This form of feeding is usually less organized than feeding birds at home, typically involving the casual tossing of picnic leftovers to the gathered gulls and waterbirds. In contrast to such impromptu feeding, however, is the virtually universal pastime of “feeding the ducks down at the lake,” a practice that leads to untold tons of bread being tossed to waterfowl the world over, bringing joy to millions and often resulting in the eutrophication of urban lakes and a host of attendant ecological problems.

  Bird feeding has also become a massive industry on a global scale. After humble beginnings as a largely DYI domestic activity, the production of commercial products such as seed mixes and the associated hardware has become a gigantic multinational enterprise. In the last few decades the amount of food being provided has reached new highs. In the United States it is estimated that about 60 million people supply hundreds of thousand tons of seed to wild birds every year.2 In the United Kingdom the amount of seed sold would support many times the actual population of the birds being fed.3 Globally, well over a million tons of seed are sold as wild bird food each year, much of it grown in India and Africa for export to the rest of the world. The United Nations estimates the global bird-seed industry to be worth US$5–6 billion, growing around 4% annually since the 1980s.4

  Astonishingly, most of this vast amount of bird food is being consumed. In almost all circumstances, the food being eaten by the birds is, by definition, extra or supplementary to their normal diet. Our provision of what is additional food is a subsidy to what they would be able to glean during their natural foraging activities. While this may seem a bit obvious, it is worth pointing out explicitly: the food we offer wild birds is entirely on top of what they would find themselves. It is the influence of this additional food in the lives of the birds we feed that we need to understand.

  The role of food and nutrition is of fundamental importance to all animals, especially in relation to the success or otherwise of breeding. Because of this, a large number of experiments have investigated the effects and influences of adding extra foods to the diets of a wide range of wild animals, including reptiles, mammals, and many species of birds. These supplementary feeding studies (covered in detail in Chapter 5) demonstrate conclusively that even a little additional food can have significant consequences. These might include having a higher chance of surviving the winter, laying more and slightly larger eggs, and raising extra offspring. For almost all species, it is fairly safe to predict that more food is likely to mean more individuals in the future. That may be exactly what we hoped for, especially for the species we care about. But how many is too many? What might happen to the local community of all bird species when the abundance of those taking advantage of our feeding grows but not the rest? And what about the unwanted birds, the aggressive and dominant species, or those that we may regard as pests?

  The types of food we provide may also be of great significance. Today, the nutritional qualities and standards of most commercial seeds are carefully monitored and maintained. Nonetheless, it is all too easy to find poor quality mixes, as well as spoiled, tainted, and even poisoned bird foods. More fundamentally, almost none of the types of foods we offer to birds are a natural component of their diet. Birds the world over adore black-oil sunflower seeds, for instance, the single most popular seed sold internationally, yet very few of the species flocking to our feeders—or any of their ancestors—will have ever fed on sunflowers in the wild. At least these are mainly granivores, adapted to consuming the seeds and grains available in their local environment. For just about everything else that is offered to (and gleefully accepted by) our wild visitors—bread and food scraps, chips and fries, sausage and cheese—will certainly be very different from anything in their natural diets. Even the most expensive commercial seed mix may not provide the same balance of proteins, fats, and vitamins they would have obtained from their natural diet.

  But does this matter? If the birds are loving whatever it is we are providing, isn’t that enough? Wouldn’t they avoid inappropriate foods? A moment’s reflection from the human perspective should be sufficient to suggest that what we eat really does matter. We are surrounded by the physiological consequences of people eating too much salt, sugar, and fat even when we know we shouldn’t. Furthermore, the nutrition we provide in our feeders may only be “supplementary” to all the other things they eat during the day, or it may be all that is available. And this raises one of the thorniest issues of all: To what extent are the birds we feed actually dependent on us? Has our desire to be close to the birds, to share our table with them, in fact shackled us together as providers and recipients? Or do most birds simply treat our provisioning as a trivial part of their overall diet while they continue to forage naturally?

  These are all critically important questions, and yet, despite the massive scale of the activity and the millions of people actively and passionately involved, remarkably little is known about most such issues. A lot of excellent and relevant research has been undertaken, though many of these studies are quite specific to particular places and species. Part of the mission of this book is to unearth and expl
ain this research.

  Exploring the reasons that lead us to spend our money on expensive seeds and feeding gadgets, to invest enormous amounts of time and energy to provide the best feeders, to battle daily with squirrels, crows, and possums, all in the hope of attracting some wild birds, is fascinating, frustrating, and fun. It is also vitally important to confront some of the un-comfortable questions raised here. Because it really is about what is best for the birds.

  I’d like to close this preface with one note on terminology. Ever since I started the process of putting this book together, the problem of “feeder” has confounded me. The word describes both the people engaged in feeding birds as well as the apparatus used to provide the seed. I have tried various alternatives, but these were just too cumbersome or artificial. I’m afraid we are stuck with the one word throughout, so please be aware of the context.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many books claim to be on some sort of journey, either in a metaphorical sense or in relation to actual geographical travel. Many are a bit of both, traversing intellectual landscapes as well as real places, complete with unexpected discoveries, life-changing experiences, faulty guidance, dead ends, and long stretches of apparently featureless terrain. The journey may be exhilarating and fundamentally rewarding, but it is always good to arrive somewhere, even if it is nothing like what was envisioned at the start.

  The journey of this book was no different. I set out confidently on what I naively thought would be a prolonged but well signposted journey, in a straightforward manner toward an indistinct but fairly certain destina-tion. Such are the first steps of many a pilgrim. The reality was far less direct, much riskier, and infinitely more interesting. And as is so often the case, the arrival at the end turned out to be barely the beginning.