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
Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
71–80 of 94 posts
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 1 ft. x 1 ft. platform with 1 inch sides, which I hang from a huge Oak tree. I put in peanuts, and wild bird seed. The black birds, and the squirels only eat the peanuts. The smaller bids eat the seeds. I have only seen the Squirrels chase away the black birds, but there are days when it's the other way around. The smaller birds wait until the peanuts are mostly gone, and they go in. Since I put in my bird f…
> If you supply water, try to change it daily. There's some bacteria going around. I know the answer is obvious, but I don’t know what it is. Why is promoting animal growth better than promoting bacteria growth?
I don't know for sure, but off the top of my head I can come up with two reasons:
1. Bacteria can be dangerous (for the animals, for us)
2. Birds are beautiful and squirrels are adorable (esp. with their their fuzzy tails). A pool of sludge is repulsive. So, uhm, I like animal growth better for personal, subjective reasons :)
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 1 ft. x 1 ft. platform with 1 inch sides, which I hang from a huge Oak tree. I put in peanuts, and wild bird seed. The black birds, and the squirels only eat the peanuts. The smaller bids eat the seeds. I have only seen the Squirrels chase away the black birds, but there are days when it's the other way around. The smaller birds wait until the peanuts are mostly gone, and they go in. Since I put in my bird f…
> If you supply water, try to change it daily. There's some bacteria going around. I know the answer is obvious, but I don’t know what it is. Why is promoting animal growth better than promoting bacteria growth?
Animals have an inherently higher worth in terms of energy, niche, process, consciousness.
Bacteria left unchecked, could wipe out a species due to it's crazy exponential growth factors. For example over running the immune system.
Lately we have had scientific observations of some or of illness killing many birds across many species.
In this case you clean the "watering hole" if you are going manage that artificial shared resource to prevent being part of the problem.
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please read your own quote back to yourself. Does it make any hard, falsifiable claims (e.g. "eating one clove of garlic daily reduces the probability of catching a cold by 26%")? Does it make any prescriptive recommendations at all (at least to people that are not hyperlypemic)? Does it even sound remotely at all like hard science? Regardless of the validity of the health claims, does this mean people should actuall…
You had me at every until saying garlic is repulsive. Shots fired, I grown garlic but I most often consume it fried in olive oil to pull out compounds into the oils for flavor. Another way one is fermented with hot peppers to make hot sauce. Just a little bit of garlic goes a long way. One hint, always remove or discard the green "germ" or kernel of the garlic before using in food prep. The nasty garlic flavor comes…
Mate I'm a wog. I generally quadruple garlic amounts recommended in recipes. GP was suggesting eating it raw, though, in large quantity.
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many chickens should I plan on for a household of two? We dispose of just a few handfuls of veggie scrapings & trim and a coffee puck each day, some fatty scraps of meat over the course of a week, and not much else. Currently composting but could well do a few chickens…
Chickens like to be in flocks, I would say 6 hens would be good for two people, yields 6 eggs per day, you'll never buy eggs again (assuming you continue the process). They can be picky so my recommendation is to also maintain a compost area they may access. The soil life breaks it down into other forms which the birds may use. Good luck! One last video for you to get pumped up: https://youtu.be/fydmrz5EThw
Oeuf! That’s four more eggs than I’d need! Maybe my neighbour would like to share.
Is it practical to let them free-range in an urbanish neighbourhood? We have deer, raccoons, cats, the occasional coyote, osprey and eagles, etc—we are not far from open range and open wildlands. I assume they’d need some sort of enclosure at night, but during the day?
I’ve checked and we are allowed a coop…
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#76"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/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/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.
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#77"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…
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.
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 repr…
> 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 eve…
Maybe you've heard of copyright and contractual obligations?
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#79Titmice used to be famous for picking the foil off the jugs the milkman delivered.
Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 repr…
> 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 eve…
This is a weird edge case.
- For most academic articles, the audience is almost entirely other academics with institutional access. If so, getting a paywalled article usually just requires signing into the VPN and reloading the page. If your university has a subscription--and it likely does to "core" journals, you're good to go. If not...
- Funders have been pushing for "open access" to research findings. Work funded by the US government needs to be freely available online within a year of publication. You should therefore either be able to access the article text somehow, either through the journal itself, a preprint server (arXiv or one of its offshoots), or a repository (PubMed Central, DTIC, etc).
- On top of that, most labs do have webpages that contain their publications. Google scholar is pretty good at finding them too.
This covers ~99.9% of cases, and they're all instant once you know how to use them. My point in the original comment was if that these fail, you should shoot the authors an email instead of paying. A few publishers do hold a fairly hard line against publicly posting an article, but even they typically allow you to provide a copy "on request".
Also, in case it's not clear, academic publishing is only partly about actually disseminating information. A huge part is getting the "imprimatur" of peer review generally, and from certain journals specifically. A brilliant self-hosted document might impress people within a very specific subfield that are motivated and able to evaluate the work. However, its value will be unclear to others who fund/hire/evaluate you. The Dean, for example, likely has neither has the background nor the time to decide if your technical blog merits tenure. He/she does know that Nature is very selective, publishing there means that your work is held in high regard by your field, and therefore you deserve tenure. This holds true for funders too. It's not a great system in many regards, but it is how things currently work.