Feeding birds is a joy for gardeners as fluttering fleets of tiny birds fall upon our freshly topped up dispensers.
Back at the kitchen window, you see them jockeying round, with lesser souls leaping into action the second a senior vacates a slot. If you’re one of the British Trust for Ornithology’s [BTO] volunteers, you may be recording the number of different species, robins, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches, you see. This UK-wide citizen science initiative provides invaluable data on bird populations throughout the year.
Approximately half of UK households feed their garden birds. Reading University’s Dr Melanie Orros and Professor Mark Fellowes calculate that we provide enough feed for around 196 million birds, approximately half of the estimated population.
As well as the pleasure of seeing all these birds in the garden, we confidently believe we’re helping the birds. So what is the effect of this generosity? Are we impacting the size of bird populations and is this a good idea?
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According to Kate Plummer, the BTO’s Senior Research Ecologist, there’s no simple answer to these questions. Our food is invaluable during the harshest winters, but research suggests feed is a supplement to their diets rather than a critical part of it.
It only forms 20% of blue tit diet and birds all forage widely for food for their offspring. Researchers found that birds returned to their usual foraging when our largesse stopped.
There’s clear evidence that populations of those species that use our feeders do increase unlike those that don’t. Plummer’s research shows that feeding during the winter lets weaker individuals survive and breed, thereby increasing the populations with poorer specimens.
Against this, however, more species of seed eating birds, like goldfinches, have started coming to our gardens as changes in agricultural methods have impoverished their natural feeding areas. So there are both positives and negatives.
But spreading disease among our visitors is a major worry.
Birds can pickup toxins from brands of bird feed that may contain mycotoxins, a mouldy fungus. This causes many unpleasant and potentially fatal side-effects. Mycotoxins occur naturally but some brands contain more than the limits allowed in bird feed.
Some cheap brands could damage any birds round the feeder. Buying more expensive but safe feed from reputable companies, approved by RSPB, is the only safe approach.
Keep the cost down by reducing the daily amount you provide, giving no more than birds will eat in a few hours.
But the fatal disease Trichomonosis is the biggest worry as bird feeders are potential transmission hotspots. A diseased bird will leave traces of the infection in a dirty feeder: Frequently cleaned feeders are much less likely to be infection points so best advice is to thoroughly clean and move feeders to a different spot every week.
This is easier said than done. Most feeders are a pain to take apart, many of you won’t have a big enough garden to move the units around, and the whole process is very time-consuming. So the most practical answer is do what you can. If you’ve more than one station, stagger any cleaning, remove the mess accumulating under the feeder, and clean as and when you’ve time.
But most importantly, enjoy the birds and keep a weather out for any sick-looking ones.
Holly, Ilex aquifolium, J.C. van Tol is a self fertile cultivar that will reliably produce berries from just the one tree.
Holly trees are usually either male or female so, to ensure berries, you need a female tree and a nearby male - the ones that produce small white flowers in spring.
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