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Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#81

Post by gerdesj »

foxhop wrote: post #3

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. Anoth…

"you could learn about animal husbandry and raise chickens for eggs"

My grandad, when he retired bought a smaller farm. He kept around 200 chickens in the old cow shippon. Now if you google "shippon", you'll be told it is a northern (English) term. My grandad was born in Paignton in 1901 and lived in Devon all his life. His working farm was near Dartmouth. I only searched to check the spelling for this comment, it turns out that the internets can spout ... approximations to truth sometimes (fancy!)

Anyway, the farm cat was called "Panda". His job was keeping an eye on the chickens. He was fed on top of the meal bin everyday next to the shippon, something/enough that kept him from deciding chicken was food.

Panda was quite a vigorous chap and once killed a fox that tried to do a DIY KFC. Any New Zealand readers familiar with Footrot Flats will see "Horse" here. Panda was Horse's British cousin. Murray Ball is a legend in my family. I have no idea why grandad called his farm cat Panda. Murray Ball called his cat Horse, probably for similar odd reasons.

The house cat was called Wee White - she was my mum and dad's that was left with her mum because they buggered off, sorry, got posted to West Germany, with me and my brother. Wee White had a white collar. Her sister Big Red had a red collar. She (Big Red) unfortunately was an example of why we ensure that cat's collars can slip off if caught in a tree.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#82

Post by gerdesj »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #77
gerdesj wrote: post #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…

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.

I live in a house with a decent garden and opposite a park. Both of which are absolutely rammed with wildlife. Which is nice.

However I completely agree with you:

"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."

We humans now dominate the biome. Completely. We can no longer rely on it to function on its own. I personally gave up on the notion of "natural", with regards a British environment a long time ago. For example I have a huge number of non native plant species growing here in my garden. What does non-native or native actually mean anyway? Are apples native? - not really (Roman introduced but work well - only about 2000 years local.) Oak? probably been here for quite a few years but check your subspecies out.

We used to have a whopper of a walnut tree here. It died two years back and we had it cut down. It was over 50' tall and when I found myself spending more time at home instead of at work recently, I noticed that wood peckers and pigeons and others used it. I saw a series of circuits. The ravens would start from next door and whizz off clockwise and the pigeons would randomly fly everywhere. The woodpeckers would simply appear and start whizzing around. It's quite hard to describe but I'd be happy to formally log stuff for a study.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#83

Post by pfdietz »

Causality1 wrote: post #28

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?

We've had birds at our feeders killed by American Kestrels.

One could view this as another layer of indirection in bird feeding.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#84

Post by Johnny555 »

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.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#85

Post by mrspeaker »

moistly wrote: post #75
foxhop wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

("Oeuf!" made me do a snort-coffee-out-my-nose laugh. Genius.)

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#86

Post by cletus »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #65
foxhop wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> Squirels seem to forget where they buried their stash?

This is well-documented. In the wild they do this with acorns. It's estimated they "remember" ~70% of their buried acorns.

What's crazy is the other 30% is where the trees come from.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#87

Post by TigeriusKirk »

Johnny555 wrote: post #84

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…

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.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#88

Post by cletus »

gerdesj wrote: post #81
foxhop wrote: post #3

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. Anoth…

"you could learn about animal husbandry and raise chickens for eggs" My grandad, when he retired bought a smaller farm. He kept around 200 chickens in the old cow shippon. Now if you google "shippon", you'll be told it is a northern (English) term. My grandad was born in Paignton in 1901 and lived in Devon all his life. His working farm was near Dartmouth. I only searched to check the spelling for this comment, it tu…

In the US those farm cats are generally called "barn cats". They will live in the barn and their "job" is to kill vermin and protect the livestock that also live there. They seem to do this instinctively.

They need to be fed independently as it ties them to the barn. Otherwise they'll leave in search of food.

When farms are sold typically the barn cats will stay with the farm as it's the only home they've known and if taken they'll often try and return to the barn.

The complexity of all this behaviour is kinda crazy to see. It's likewise the case with dogs that have herding instincts. You'll see them blocking chicks or ducklings from getting out of their pen or just getting stressed when they think some of the animals are where they shouldn't be. Often any tendency to chase other animals is actually the dog trying to get the animal back where it belongs.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#89

Post by birbs »

jakear wrote: post #67
hellbannedguy wrote: post #65

Earlier 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?

One isn’t inherently better than the other, but if you spend time making a platform for birds, you probably want to enjoy looking at them rather than let them die.

Re: Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?

#90

Post by 11235813213455 »

aw1621107 wrote: post #55
11235813213455 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It (B12) is synthesized by some bacteria in the gut flora in humans and other animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#:~:text=It%20is%20... so yea not directly by us, but by our guts flora, you validate it?

The rest of the sentence provides some important information: > It is synthesized by some bacteria in the gut flora in humans and other animals, but it has long been thought that humans cannot absorb this as it is made in the colon, downstream from the small intestine, where the absorption of most nutrients occurs.

ok, maybe not everything has been discovered about this, because how come my summer diet of only figs, tomatoes and some leafy greens doesn't cause any b12 deficiency symptoms? (as listed here https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamin-b12-or-folate-deficien...)

but I'm not at all a vegan, it's just that currently there is an abundance of figs around, and why not use those calories. I may consume a fish later in the year, but I'd be curious to understand why some people suffer from b12 deficiency, and some others apparently don't

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