The RSPB has done research and they are advising 'NOT' to feed birds from feeders during summer months -end of May to beginning of October. This to help stop the spread of Trichomonosis a disease spread among many finches.
They also advise changing water everyday in birdbaths.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lwvz1pl1no
This has been very well understood by boffins for a long time now. Realistically, all feeding is bad, you end with with a very high density of species that have no business being right next to each other.
The RSPB (and others) make a boat load of money from selling food and feeders so there's been a lot of heads buried in the sand about it all. There's case that the outreach and awareness benefits of bird feeders outweigh the negativies if the feeding is done carefully, but its difficult to quantify.
Feed birds => make birds sick
Feed birds => disproportionately benefit particular species
are very simple to demonstrate though.
I stopped feeding a long while ago - my main motivation was the rats, despite having two terriers! I’m lucky to have a large half acre garden (small semi house!) that I “manage” for wildlife. As posted elsewhere I leave plants to seed and have just done my spring clean by cutting back. Goldfinches are a common site on the japanese anemone seed heads.
I did start feeding the fox but then quickly realised that I wasn’t doing anyone any favours, I’ve observed it on my wildlife camera sniffing round an area where I had rats. A few days later, large holes and no rats!
I stopped when there were so many nesting in my hedges that my neighbours cat/s were having a field day. Shame as I really enjoyed the variety of birds we would get visiting but not so much fun burying yet another poor bugger left on my lawn.
I never bothered, next door had a bird table , the food fell to the ground consequence he was plagued by a badger digging under his fence on a regular basis.
This advice will not go down well with a lot of people. However it is so important when we do feed, that is done totally with the birds in mind, not only for our benefit. We’ve always thoroughly cleaned and swapped our feeders. Always changed the drinking and birdbath water. Sadly many people aren’t as fastidious as our household.
There is so much joy though to watch finches feeding from the natural seeds. Also we can still use other food - mealworms and fatballs, again with cleanliness in mind.
As ever education is key.
Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea.
We feed the birds. Mostly it's TV for our three indoor cats. Fat balls get chomped in winter (shush now), the peanuts were a complete waste of money, mixed seeds they absolutely tear through.
Other predators aren't an issue to the best of my knowledge, there's a black cat which visits occasionally but rarely and it's skittish.
Probably the biggest beneficiary of my bird feeder is the local sparrowhawk. There's a gap in next door's hedge roughly in line with the mealworm tube, and all too often I'll see a streak of grey/brown and a puff of feathers near the feeder as some hapless songbird meets its maker.
Probably the biggest beneficiary of my bird feeder is the local sparrowhawk. There's a gap in next door's hedge roughly in line with the mealworm tube, and all too often I'll see a streak of grey/brown and a puff of feathers near the feeder as some hapless songbird meets its maker.
I guess that still counts as "feeding the birds"?
I'll stop feeding them at the end of the month and start again in autumn. A lot of seed companies are not going to be happy!
Probably the biggest beneficiary of my bird feeder is the local sparrowhawk
So putting nuts out still counts as "feeding the birds", even if it's indirect! 😉
The birds usually find their own food during June - October anyway. I've been reading a few wildlife facebook pages today and it's sad to read that quite a few people will not comply.
Yes our local sparrowhawk will miss it's weekly take-a-way buffet.
When did bird feedong become year round anyway?
I am sure blue peter used to tell us it was time to feed the birds and then make some fatty seed yoghurt tubs with string in.
I love feeding the birds, we have a small garden and get a good selection, I clean the feeders regularly but i have just stopped now for the summer. Plenty of natural food in the spring summer and means hopefully the local cats won't target areas with feeders so much, as we had recently. I had planned to shoot the cats but my wife said she wouldn't let the kids visit me in jail..... Much rather see native songbirds in the garden doing what they should than a non essential cat eating them, figures show that theres between 27-55 million birds killed by domestic cats in the spring summer each year.
Get rid of the cats I say!
Someone isn't going to be happy about the hit to her livelihood.
Thanks for sharing Bunnyhop. Have passed it on to the bird feeder in our household.
For people who haven't read the RSPB recommendations, the break from feeding is 1st May - 31st October. There is advice to 'end' the use of bird tables altogether. Some feed is still encouraged eg soaked or live meal worms and small amounts of 'fatballs'.
It'll be interesting to see if bird numbers decline.
I personally feel we also need to ban plastic turf, paving over whole gardens and strengthening the rules on hedge cutting and tree felling. Encouraging wild areas in parks and gardens too.
It'll be interesting to see if bird numbers decline.
As we discussed in one of the other threads, a decline in some species is to be expected if a ready supply of food is withdrawn. If your feeders attract a lot of blue/great tits (or woodpigeons etc) then you are skewing bird populations. Those tits will out-compete other species for nest sites, so by feeding those species people are already affecting the populations of less competitive species eg willow tits, which are already struggling and don't need us humans to help wipe them out in the UK by feeding the pretty little blue ones.
I personally feel we also need to ban plastic turf, paving over whole gardens and strengthening the rules on hedge cutting and tree felling. Encouraging wild areas in parks and gardens too.
Absolutely!
After showing my wife who is the main bird feeder the articles on this, we are complying. We've always tried to keep feeders clean with disinfectant etc. but the evidence for stopping though counterintuitive, seems compelling. We try to leave areas a bit wild and grow bird and insect friendly trees and plants. Hopefully this and the abundant natural food in spring and summer will mean they won't miss it. We have loads of bird boxes up and our annual swallow visitors have just returned to an old barn. We have curlews on neighbouring fields too!
I will miss seeing the sparrows squabbling on the kitchen window feeder though.
Stop feeding the birds? After sitting glued to the telly yesterday when David Attenborough was going on about a family of Blue Tits in an urban garden, my Luna is expecting them to be about the size of a Hen! You can't expect me to disappoint that wee face, can you?
You can't expect me to disappoint that wee face, can you?
Fenboy can 😀
strengthening the rules on hedge cutting and tree felling
I've started to notice a trend in developments I think. We've got a huge housing estate going up on the entrance green belt to my town (Leamington) and the road that leads into town has a planned entrance to this housing development.
It did have really lovely tree cover right down the length of this road for maybe half a mile.
They've completely clear cut the road on both sides for the whole stretch. Absolutely in excess of what might have been needed for this entrance.
It was suggested that the reason they did it then was to be ahead of nesting season.
Are they tending to clear cut much larger areas now before nesting season for fear of having hands tied over any required felling further down the line?
I think this is what happened on a larger scale with HS2 which my county is severely affected by.
@blokeuptheroad - I was lucky enough to see your gorgeous garden on 'Escape to the Country'. I record the programmes to watch in the evenings. Yours is certainly a wildlife friendly garden.
@Kayak23 - it's happening all over the country, precious greenbelt land (when brownfield sites should be used) is being dug up along with Ancient woodland. mature hedgerows, rich flower meadows, filling in wildlife ponds, the list is endless. Teeny saplings planted in the place of mature trees, manicured supposed 'green areas' in the centre of these housing estates. Property developers don't give a flying fig about nature, wildlife, biodiversity etc.
Has any body got a link to the evidence base behind the RSPB announcement?
I would like to read it and understand it better.
when brownfield sites should be used
Myth sadly! There's a) not much about b) even less anywhere located someone will want to live c) still less thats in a state where it can be cleared to be safe to build houses on.
There *are* places where development can happen that doesn't involve changing use from ag to residential...the places where there are houses already. Replacing ultra low density suburbs with higher density medium rise mansion blocks would do the trick. Wont happen because nimbys. So it'll be new towns on lower value ag land, and all the car dependency issues that'll entail. Hooray.
Duplicate post, deleted.
@blokeuptheroad - I was lucky enough to see your gorgeous garden on 'Escape to the Country'. I record the programmes to watch in the evenings. Yours is certainly a wildlife friendly garden.
Thanks, although nervous beforehand, Sue really enjoyed doing that and has got quite a bit of extra business from it. The producers wanted me to be in some of the shots too, but I thought I had a cast iron excuse, I was on a pre-planned bike packing trip darn sarf with my grown up kids.
So they said, "film a few bits yourself on a phone and well use them". Doh!🤦♂️ Reluctantly I did, but thankfully they didn't use them. Result! It seems that unlike my gorgeous missus, I have a face for radio 😊
The show was filmed in June last year and the garden was looking good. It's starting to again after the winter quagmire. I love Spring! More Curlews spotted (and heard) overhead yesterday.
Sue wrote about taking our bird feeders down on her artwork Instagram account
Has any body got a link to the evidence base behind the RSPB announcement?
I would like to read it and understand it better.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800923002276
heres one, you'll want to find a library with acceess to all the relevent journals for most of it. Science has been settled for a long while tho. In terms of pure ornithology, the bird nerds don't want people to feed birds at all*. Even in the winter. You aren't 'helping' birds by feeding them in the winter, you are punishing the migrants and favouring the residents. A 'bad' winter is very much a good thing for the spcies that took the trouble (and losses) to go to Africa! Ditto nest boxes, you are farming blue tits.
Timing of the announcement doesnt have much to do with any new research, its internal politics and more big picture stuff. Ie, garden feeders keep people interested in birds, the +ve benefits of which may or may not outweigh the -ve's. This bunfight has been going on for about a decade internally. Team feeders has usually won because of the amount of money food and feeders brings in.
*exceptions for feeding specific species in specific locations for specific purposes. not relevent to garden feeders.
Ahem, I've taken the names of those 2 cats and will be keeping an eye on them! be vigilant! 🧐
Has any body got a link to the evidence base behind the RSPB announcement?
I would like to read it and understand it better.
Coincidentally my copy of the BTO's quarterly magazine for participants in the Garden Birdwatch project arrived this morning, and they have a 3 page article on this subject; they collaborated with the RSPB on the research. Although I can't find any recent direct online article about the problems with trichomonisis, they have just published this FAQs, which might be easier to read than the one @dakuan mentions above.
Seasonal advice for feeding garden birds – frequently-asked questions | BTO
Edit - just noticed, 2nd line down in that has the words 'in this article' as a hyperlink, which takes you to this document bt125-23-25_0.pd which is a pdf of the magazine article
Thanks dakuan
Thanks dakuan
I hope this means that Springwatch can stop baiting critters so they can film them.
I hope this means that Springwatch can stop baiting critters so they can film them.
The BBC have a strict policy of never doing this.
I could have sworn that I saw peanuts on tree stumps being eaten by martens in the most recent series. Must have been left by an itinerant snacker...
I hope this means that Springwatch can stop baiting critters so they can film them.
The BBC have a strict policy of never doing this.
I could have sworn that I saw peanuts on tree stumps being eaten by martens in the most recent series. Must have been left by an itinerant snacker...
ha! you also have the 'baiting or not?' question. For some people, only dead animals are bait, but dead plants or dead insects are not.
The only feeders I have that get attention are the ones with sunflower seeds, which the goldfinches prefer, although the pair of blue tits resent them coming into ‘their’ territory and dive bomb them as soon as they see them. I’ve just started having sparrows on the feeders in my back garden, they go for the fat balls, the suet pellets and sometimes the sunflower seeds, but they are just as often chirping away in the Pyrocanthus hedges out the front.
The goldcrests are frequently on the fat balls and the fat filled coconut shells, the dunnocks seem to be all over the place!
The magpies love the fat balls, the various other tits - great, coal, and marsh, are more common during the winter, but turn up occasionally. The starlings aren’t coming in as large numbers at the moment, there’s one pair hanging around most of the day, but they may well be back with their kids later. They mostly go for the calci worms, but do like the fat balls and suet pellets.
I have tried feeders with all sorts of different seeds in, but they just get ignored and the seeds thrown away. 🤷🏼♂️
I’ve just started having sparrows on the feeders in my back garden, they go for the fat balls, the suet pellets and sometimes the sunflower seeds, but they are just as often chirping away in the Pyrocanthus hedges out the front.
I read a nice article about house sparrows a little while ago. Basically, to inaccurately paraphrase, sparrows can only digest a certain amount of food at a time so retreat to a hedge like yours to allow digestion to happen. They spend that time chirruping away, but studies suggest that they spend longer in the hedge than digestion takes, so the conclusion is that they spend their time together in the hedge, singing, simply because they enjoy it. 😀
Today is the start of the no 'seed feed'. I've spoken to quite a few bird lovers who probably will ignore the advice. We've decided to run down the 2 feeders (the seed in there will only last 2 days anyway). Clean thoroughly and put away. Yes we will miss the visitors to our garden, but the garden will be providing wild food soon.
We are in two minds about this. It seems difficult to find peer reviewed evidence and some of the publish evidence about finding alternative food sources come from studies in rural areas.
Genuinely don’t know which way to go as many of our neighbours love paving garden buildings and astroturfing. One felled two big alder trees which were a massive resource for wildlife.
My instinct is to let the popular feeder of sunflower hearts run dry today, then take it down, clean it again and leave it down for a couple of days. Then next week half fill it, let that run down, leave it empty for a few days. On repeat for the summer. So maybe a cup full of hearts each week and no more.
I've got whole sunflower seeds in another feeder on the other side of the garden, but they're mostly ignored in favour of the hearts. It'll be interesting to see if the greenfinches move across to those. Will leave the suet and nyger seeds out too for now.
We are also winding down the last of the feed we have had - should be gone in a day or two.
This morning saw the return of our pair of greater spotted woodpeckers to the feeders, plus swallows out early as well. Usual sramble of long, great, blue and coal tits, sparrows, chaffinches and robin. The collared doves must be expecting as they were not shagging on the fence as usual today. The buzzard was around last night of course, but seems a lazy bugger so you never see it out before mid morning when the crows go madder than mad at it.
I think it must have taken a lot of evidence for the RSPB to issue the stop feeding advice. They sell a lot of bird feed and make quite an income from it.
I stopped a couple of years ago due to rodent activity and just concentrate on our garden being a welcoming spot for all wildlife (apart from rats!).
Then maybe they should publish or reference the research?
Then maybe they should publish or reference the research?
What are you expecting to find? There is research out there - the BTO published at least one paper in one of it's subscription journals last year iirc - just maybe not so much in the public domain. Maybe subscribe to the BTO if you're that interested?
