[HN Gopher] Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
___________________________________________________________________
Does feeding garden birds do more harm than good?
Author : cmsefton
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-08-28 10:11 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| cmsefton wrote:
| The paper mentioned in the article, Killing with kindness: Does
| widespread generalised provisioning of wildlife help or hinder
| biodiversity conservation efforts?, can be found here:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...
| lucb1e wrote:
| > can be found here
|
| For the low price of only $35.95!
|
| Not even sure it contains much. The abstract says (replacing
| some needlessly obscure words because not everyone's native
| language is english):
|
| > Direct effects upon [fed animals] have garnered most research
| interest, and are generally positive in leading to increased
| survival, productivity and hence population growth. However, we
| argue that the wider implications for [their non-fed]
| competitors, prey and predators are underappreciated and have
| the potential to generate pervasive negative impacts for
| biodiversity.
|
| "We argue"? Not like, "we show" or "our data shows"? A bit
| further into it:
|
| > Using a case study of UK garden bird food and nestbox
| provisioning, we hypothesise how well-intentioned [feeding]
| could be contributing to widespread ecological community change
| and homogenisation.
|
| I know the word hypothesise as basically meaning speculate or a
| theory yet to be investigated (and a dictionary agrees). I
| guess they do have some results from that case study, but with
| this tentative wording I'm not sure it's worth forking over
| thirty bucks to a publisher for no conclusions.
| mattkrause wrote:
| FWIW, virtually nobody pays the sticker price for a single
| article. Many researchers have some kind of institutional
| access (e.g., through a library).
|
| If you don't, shoot one of the authors an email and ask for a
| copy. Not only will they certainly send you one---they don't
| see a penny of that money---but you'll also make some harried
| grad student's day.
| OJFord wrote:
| Also assuming you went to university you probably have such
| access via its library as an alumnus/a, though not (at
| least in my case) remotely, would have to actually go in
| and access from the network.
|
| (I've never done so; I don't expect many people do, but
| especially living in the same city still I quite like the
| idea that in theory I can!)
| watwut wrote:
| Does not make the price not absurd. And then you have
| researchers who have to ask friend of friend or otherwise
| hunt down articles.
|
| These prices is how rich institutions gets even more
| advantage over those in less rich parts of world. And that
| is pretty much it.
| mattkrause wrote:
| 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 reprint/preprint?
| Thanks."
|
| 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.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > 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
| even be in an accessible HTML format (I'd love this
| instead of basically-image formats like PDF) and you can
| check if people leave the page after 5 seconds or if
| there are 30 minutes worth of mouse movement events. Not
| to say that you need to track this all identifiably, but
| the server could ingest "user still active on page"
| events and aggregate that per IP address or something
| until the session goes cold, then convert it to a mere
| "visitor #9001, stayed 27 minutes". I'm probably already
| overthinking this because I've never seen anyone host
| their own paper in the first place, nor any other format
| than PDF. Why doesn't anyone do that?
|
| Sending an email to request the paper is much slower than
| just having access (be that through sci-hub, a friend
| that you can see is online and whose university still
| supports the publisher system, etc.), so I don't think
| that's a good solution even if I understand perfectly why
| you love to hear of your readers. Imagine you had to
| email the authors of every link here on HN every time you
| think a headline sounds interesting; it's just not a
| solution to paywalls with ridiculous costs per article.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Interesting research.... ...but don't feed the garden birds will
| harm my mother brain healt, she is convinced that without her
| food those "poor little birds" will death! :)
| mcny wrote:
| I like the short story "what men live by"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Men_Live_By
|
| My conclusion from the story isn't that we shouldn't do our
| best but we shouldn't worry. The universe existed before I was
| born and it will continue to exist after I am dead.
| Causality1 wrote:
| 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?
| stinos wrote:
| I don't think that is a generalisation which can easily be
| made. Many factors in play as well, e.g. imagine the situation
| where the birds normally have to be at about ground level to
| pick seeds, and one hangs a feeder on a washing line. The
| latter cannot be reached by cats, in the former situation the
| casts just have to wait for their possible meal to arrive. At
| the same time seeds drop from the feeder so birds going for
| that are an easier target for cats. But that's back to square
| one, so might not total to increased risk.
| foxhop wrote:
| 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.
|
| Another favorite I noticed among the small birds is wild Lambs
| Quarter seeds, same thing, thousands of small seed per plant.
|
| And if you really can't help yourself, you could learn about
| animal husbandry and raise chickens for eggs, they love to have
| about 20% of their diet as scratch grains. I like to ferment and
| sprout the dried grains to make it easier for my hens digestion.
| Did you know chickens are omnivores and eat nearly all the same
| foods as humans? No wonder we keep them around, they literally
| eat all the left overs!
|
| For more details check out this video:
|
| https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw
| somesortofsystm wrote:
| I concur, as a permaculturist myself, 100% completely.
|
| We get an extraordinary variety of species in our garden every
| year, and its because of the plants we grow - not because of
| the birdseed we buy in bags.
| tomcam wrote:
| We raise chickens and find them incredibly endearing and
| entertaining.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is neat. Just doing nothing with a section of the garden
| seems to help. Let things grown and leave them alone and all
| sorts of stuff appears. We now have weta, which I like (at a
| distance), though others are less keen.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weta
| birbs wrote:
| The mechanism described in the article is that human assistance
| benefits more dominant species over less dominant ones, which
| increases the dominant species population and further
| suppresses the less dominant species. How is your garden
| fundamentally different than using a bird feeder regarding this
| specific interaction?
| jstrH wrote:
| Oh well.
|
| It would be an "issue" without the awareness.
|
| Having awareness does not mean humans can/must stop being
| human.
|
| At least a permaculture garden is an attempt at self
| providing utilitarian effort.
|
| A bird feeder is just a low effort spectator sport with one
| outcome.
| foxhop wrote:
| 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.
| birbs wrote:
| I don't think the size of the bird is particularly relevant
| as birds of the same size compete for the same nesting
| sites. The article gives the example of blue tits
| dominating willow and marsh tits by hoarding the bird
| feeder and kicking them out of their nesting sites. Both
| the willow and marsh tit are slightly bigger than the blue
| tit. It seems to me that your garden would also have this
| issue.
| chongli wrote:
| A bird feeder is a very small location with an extremely
| high concentration of seeds. A garden, while small, is
| much larger than a feeder. I think less dominant birds
| would stand a much better chance of reaching the seeds in
| a spread out garden than they would at a feeder.
| Additionally, the plants in the garden offer cover for
| small birds to hide behind while they're eating seeds on
| the ground. This should also help the less dominant birds
| survive.
| numbsafari wrote:
| Another factor is whether your practice also helps create
| additional nesting spots. Certain plants, leaving behind
| brush or downed trees, etc, can help create additional
| nesting sites, or leave ones that would otherwise be
| removed. For example, we maintain a few brush piles and
| downed trees rather than chipping everything. These make
| for busy way points where you'll see less common
| visitors.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| 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 feeder, I have noticed more birds of
| all species some using my property. I have had a small bird
| (I think a finch) set up nest on my front porch 3 times.
| The nests are a few yards from the feeder, and bath.
|
| I have noticed small birds eating spiders under my eaves.
|
| Since man has built houses, and paved land; I can't see how
| a bird feeder does much of anything besides bring in a lot
| of species. Peanuts will bring in rats too. Squirels bury
| the peanuts, and rats will dig them up. Squirels seem to
| forget where they buried their stash?
|
| I probally over feed with the peanuts. I've noticed the
| black birds will squawk for peanuts around 4 pm., and the
| Squirels practically tell me to feed them. There was one
| who used to rattle tge screen door.
|
| I've noticed this year in particular, the watering platform
| is used by more birds, and insects. I could be me. I might
| be thinking they are thirsty because of the drought, but I
| just see a lot of action in that water. (If you supply
| water, try to change it daily. There's some bacteria going
| around.)
| jakear wrote:
| > 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?
| foxhop wrote:
| 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.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| 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 :)
| moistly wrote:
| 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...
| foxhop wrote:
| 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
| moistly wrote:
| 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...
| airhead969 wrote:
| What a dumb article.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| It develops bird-human relationships, and it makes up for all the
| lost biomass of insects.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I often see people giving bread or other completely inappropriate
| food to birds in parcs or horses, chickens in small farms or
| ducks, swans, gallinules, fishes in estuaries
|
| I think we can also raise the problem in people diet as well,
| it's quite related. Our ideal food is plant-based, vegetables,
| fruits, grains, seeds, leaves, bulbs (eating raw garlic is
| incredible), that's what we're designed for chewing and digesting
| since million years
|
| edit: I can understand my comment is unpopular since I'm saying
| most people diet is inappropriate as well, but instead of rage
| downvoting, try to phrase why you disagree
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >Our ideal food is...
|
| This is probably why you're getting downvotes; it's the
| idealism and certainty with which you determine a human's ideal
| diet.
|
| We cannot say with certainty what the ideal human diet is. And
| what's ideal for one group isn't ideal for another. For
| example: most Northern Europeans are adapted to digest fresh
| milk while East Asians are not.
|
| I can't say with certainty what the best human diet is. But I
| can say it is _highly probable_ that the ideal human diet
| includes some meat, and it 's _highly probable_ that humans
| cannot thrive on a plants-only diet. This is evidenced by no
| plants-only diet peoples in existence today, other than vegans,
| which are a young group, untested by time. And time is the
| greatest filter.
|
| The longer something has been around, the higher the
| probability it is _a good thing_ , and the higher the
| probability it will continue to stick around. And plant-only
| diet peoples haven't been around very long. Contrast that with
| peoples who eat meat, who have existed for millions of years.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Vegans must eat some foods enriched with b vitamins to
| survive so they are not really on a plants only diet either.
| An entirely raw food, plant only diet leads to a horrible
| death due to b12 deficiency.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Yeah, these downvotes are silly. My guess would be not rage but
| simple disagreement, neither of which justify downvotes.
|
| Raw garlic is very intense, I've never heard of eating that
| except minced in salsa.
|
| I'd also say we're not evolved for purely vegetable eating,
| we've had access to cooked meat from fire for probably 1-2
| million years. This is one reason our brains expanded, because
| we gained access to richer foods like cooked meat with fat,
| which in turn supported more brain cognition.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| > I'd also say we're not evolved for purely vegetable eating
|
| how come I can get all my necessary nutrients from it so?
|
| > This is one reason our brains expanded, because we gained
| access to richer foods like cooked meat with fat, which in
| turn supported more brain cognition.
|
| This also is interesting, it's definitely possible that at
| this time humans didn't have access to enough vegetable, it
| was pretty cold 1-2 million years ago, people like inuits
| obviously don't eat much plant-based food. Fire was an
| important step (for creating warmth at least), for cooking
| see this https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/food-for-
| thought-... which puts things more in relief
|
| In brief, you're putting 2 confounding factors together:
| brain size expansion and cooked meat. It's very likely that
| our environment challenges forced us to adapt and get more
| intelligent, but the causal effect you're saying is not true,
| just like any logical implication can't be reversed
|
| It's also fun because you are also implying "you'll be more
| clever by eating meat than vegetables" which is also wrong
| nowadays, just because we can't compare a situation that
| happened 1 million years ago in a different context.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| My understanding of the theory is that animals which
| subsist on greens have a huge gut to allow for fermentation
| to get the calories from the fiber in the plants. Eating
| meat _allowed_ our brains to grow larger and gut to shrink,
| since meat is more calorie dense, and the brain consumes a
| lot of energy.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I use to use a lot of raw garlic mixing with mayo or potatoes
| or whatever.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Our ideal food is plant-based
|
| This is a myth. We eat lots of cereals of course, but the
| longest living people are definitely ommnivorous and eat a lot
| of seafood also. We can survive on bread and water, but this is
| not ideal.
|
| Common people identify plant eaters with primitive, but is a
| mistake. Specialized plant eaters developped a lot of modern
| features. We don't have ever-growing teeth. We don't have a gut
| split in several specialized guts for housing fermenting
| bacteria. We don't have a sophisticated olfact sense to smell
| the plants and detect poisonous ones.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My favourite are the people who claim being a vegan is our
| natural state but eat fortified foods to get enough B12.
| [deleted]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > that's what we're designed for chewing and digesting since
| million years
|
| You're being downvoted because this is just wrong. Humans
| aren't "designed", we evolved and we evolved as omnivores NOT
| for a plant based diet.
|
| I'm not saying we can't switch to a plant based diet now, it is
| probably better for us and the planet; but this "humans are
| naturally vegan" is just silly.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Sure we are omnivore like most primates, and fortunately
| because some human sometimes don't have anything else to eat.
| And meat is often better and safer cooked. I eat fish
| sometimes, but very rarely (2-3x/year), it's not about vegan,
| it's about unprocessed food (fruits, and most vegetable don't
| need to be cooked, and it's drastically reducing their
| benefits to do it). I think it's something people have to
| experience in the long term before arguing against it. Yes
| people can survive eating processed food, but I'm just saying
| it's not optimal
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Your hypothesis seems to be that the invention of cooking
| made us unhealthier? That seems unlikely.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Are you referring to the situation 1-2 millions years ago
| when human brain size expanded? The sitatuion back then
| and now are not comparable. Just like inuits don't eat
| much plant-based food, like I said they had no choice,
| they needed fire to warm themselves, they needed food,
| any food in their different climate at that time. We
| can't transpose this situation now, we can grow more
| various vegetables, we can get all the nutrients from
| them, and actually more than meat
| foxhop wrote:
| My teenage son is a picky eater, still thinks unbleached wheat
| bread sandwich crust tastes bad. I used to feel like it was a
| waste to toss, still felt bad to compost, now that I feed the
| crust to my hens and see how they light up, I no longer feel
| bad.
|
| As for garlic in the raw, I'm glad you can eat that, I can as
| well but my wife absolutely cannot eat garlic even though she
| does enjoy the taste.
|
| If you really love garlic check out this authentic Italian
| process and techniques in this video, I was pleasantly
| surprised:
|
| https://youtu.be/NTSxnC7vCRc
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I definitely prefer to eat garlic raw, you can let it in your
| mouth for a while, saliva will make it less strong. But
| cooking it is killing too much of its important macro-
| nutriments. I don't eat pastas or other starch because with
| experience I feel like they're "glueing" my digestive system
| and make digestion less efficient. My diet is mostly fruit
| currently (tons of free figs along my rides, persimmons,
| clementines, grapes), tomatoes from a local producer, all
| kind of edible plant leaves (e.g. common purslane, kale,
| onion leaves, leek leaves..), everything raw actually since
| many years. Even bell pepper, cucumbers, zucchinis I eat them
| "raw" (in quotes because technically fruits and this stuff
| are already somewhat cooked by the sun, and later by our
| digestive system), you can feel some taste that wouldn't
| exist anymore when they're cooked, it requires to chew more,
| and with time, the situation completely change, you don't
| like anymore cooked products
|
| It's great that you have a garden, I hope you'll grow some
| stuff. I was picky like your son when young, but fortunately
| I changed my diet later
| sofixa wrote:
| > I was picky like your son when young, but fortunately I
| changed my diet later
|
| That's a weird statement to make after describing how you
| only eat very peculiar food - raw leaves, fruit and some
| veggies. ( Who the heck eats cucumbers nom-raw?)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Who the heck eats cucumbers nom-raw?
|
| pickles.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| right, I meant I'm not picky for the food I eat, I'll eat
| damaged fruit, some fresh ripe fruit from the tree with
| sometimes some little worms, I won't mind, or a bird
| bite, or one on the ground even if it looks fresh enough,
| that's what I meant by non-picky, not wasting stuff,
| eating cucumbers or zucchinis raw and with all the skin
| of course
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I think you're being downvoted because you're giving non-
| mainstream health advice and acting as if it's sensible and
| obvious.
|
| Most people are used to hearing strange health advice from
| others and have developed strong "bullshit detector" instincts
| around this topic.
|
| "Eat raw garlic" would be a textbook example of this form of
| health advice, as it has an extremely unpleasant taste in any
| significant quantity and also makes you smell bad to others.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It's dangerous health advice as well, going completely vegan
| without some planning can result in all sorts of health
| issues.
|
| Everyone should Google "vegan b12 deficiency"
|
| Plant based diets can be healthy but you're putting
| nutritional yeast in a lot of meals.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Yes switching too fast is dangerous for someone without a
| good vitality
|
| Of course people should do it gradually, and about b12
| deficiency, someone eating mostly raw food will have lower
| levels (compared to the "health norm") but it's mostly
| because we need less of it, we can produce it naturally,
| and do so only when necessary. It's in French but someone
| like Florian Gomet explains this fact well. Why would I be
| deficient in b12 if my energy, digestion, and everything is
| going perfectly (someone "deficient" would not be able to
| accomplish what Florian Gomet did or just my life style
| since 10 years)? I'm asking you
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| I haven't been able to find any reputable sources about
| your claim "we can produce it naturally", which sets off
| my bullshit detector for your entire claim.
|
| You might be more successful if you support what you say
| with sources.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| > 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?
| aw1621107 wrote:
| 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.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| They are completely wrong. There is some b12 generated by
| our gut bacteria but it is too low in the digestive track
| to be effectively absorbed. There is a reason vegans eat
| foods enriched in b vitamins.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| > Garlic is the plant necessary in everyday life from the
| past until the present days. It contains active compounds
| that are responsible for its effect on almost every part of
| the human body. Garlic is an excellent tonic for the human
| organism. It has been used for medical treatment of
| everything, from ancient civilizations to date > From all of
| the above-mentioned data, it can be concluded that
| administration of garlic should not be avoided; on the
| contrary, its intake should be as much as possible since it
| underlies human health.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249897/#sec1-3.
| ..
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| 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 actually start eating something that is
| repulsive to both them and everybody else around them?
| foxhop wrote:
| 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 from there.
|
| Planting and growing garlic is easy and for northerners
| we plant in the Autumn. Video related:
|
| https://youtu.be/GUYrN0o-cfk
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Mate I'm a wog. I generally quadruple garlic amounts
| recommended in recipes. GP was suggesting eating it raw,
| though, in large quantity.
| oblak wrote:
| 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
| christophilus wrote:
| An alternative narrative: if feeders favor dominant/ bully birds,
| it might help the less dominant ones by freeing up just about
| every other spot in the area. If you knew the high school bullies
| were hanging out in the gym 90% of the time, the gym is actually
| helping you avoid the bullies (assuming you don't _have_ to go to
| the gym).
| greenhatman wrote:
| The bullies tend to be loud and annoying. So I'd personally
| prefer not to have them in my yard. Geese are the worst.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| But what if the bullies reproduced yearly? Wouldn't you want to
| reduce the bully's food supply?
| [deleted]
| birbs wrote:
| Only in the short term. The additional food allows for
| additional bullies to survive, so now the bullies occupy their
| old stomping ground AND the bird feeder. And of course the new
| bullies need nesting sites that they'll happily take from
| submissive birds.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Maybe, but I suspect many of the birds I see around are made of
| the very food my wife puts out. Would be curious to see more
| study.
| beardyw wrote:
| Our bullies here in London are ring-necked parakeets. They are
| the most bad-tempered birds on the feeder, preferring to peck
| at each other, and other birds, than to actually eat. I keep
| one feeder with a cage over it to give the smaller birds a
| chance. Luckily they only come mid morning and late afternoon,
| so again the other birds get to eat in peace.
|
| Spring and early summer we have breeding starlings who also
| cause a commotion on the feeder, but that is more of a good
| natured scrum, they eat very fast and disappear in seconds.
| lmilcin wrote:
| If these are migratory birds, then it is possible you are going
| to kill them by keeping them feeding while they should be
| migrating.
|
| We have this problem here in Poland
|
| Then you find birds dead because they are not adapted to
| surviving the winter.
| dendodge wrote:
| That's an interesting point.
|
| In the (UK) context of this study/article, blue tits and great
| tits (and indeed most garden birds) are generally non-migratory
| in the UK, so I think that's an orthogonal issue.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| To be fair bird movements are quite complicated: e.g. a Robin
| in the UK between September to March might be a member of a
| migratory or a non-migratory population. And Blackcaps are an
| example of a mostly migratory species in the UK but where
| less migratory individuals come to feeding stations in winter
| months.
| rhizome wrote:
| Are you trying to say that the availability of food along the
| way can supplant a bird's entire migratory instinct?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Hum, I don't think so. Even with a few birds dying, as long as
| they are replenished routinely bird feeders are definitely good
| for winter survivorship in birds.
|
| Birds that evolved in Central Europe don't die by winter if
| they can find a constant supply of food. Can choose to do a
| shorter migration and overwinter in northern areas and this is
| good for the survival of young birds. Urban areas are warmer
| also. Migrating south is hazardous and exhausting and there are
| some places in the Mediterranean or Africa that are notoriously
| dangerous for birds when they are hunted massively.
| lmilcin wrote:
| There is a lot of migratory birds that just can't survive
| winter, let alone harsh one, even when fed.
|
| Some have evolved in much warmer climate (a lot of migratory
| birds from Europe evolved in Africa) and never evolved to
| survive winter.
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