To Feed or Not to Feed: That Was the Question

 

© Marlene A. Condon
February, 2015

At my last talk of the season in Shenandoah National Park, an audience member asked me about bird feeding. He’d heard that this activity was linked to the increase in Lyme disease because it increased the number of mice around people’s homes.

White-footed Mice serve as the main reservoir for Lyme bacteria. These microorganisms are transferred to people when larval ticks that have fed upon infected mice reach the nymph or adult stage of their life cycle and feed upon humans. (Ticks prefer deer, but people make an acceptable substitute.)

The man was quite concerned about the possibility of contracting this illness, and he was rather upset that I didn’t agree that people should stop feeding birds. He felt that if people maintained the nature-friendly garden that I was advocating, they wouldn’t need to feed birds anyway.

While it’s true that people could—and should—supply food to wildlife by properly landscaping their property, the reality is that very few people understand the value of replicating the natural world around their homes. Thus very few yards are truly capable of supplying food to birds and other wildlife.

Bird feeding can help animals survive, especially during harsh weather when it’s absolutely crucial for them to have easy access to food. However, people should feed responsibly, which means understanding the consequences of their actions and addressing potential problems.

You can avoid increasing mouse populations by simply putting out only the amount of seed that birds will consume in a day. An organism’s population can grow only if there is plenty of food to sustain its expansion.

You can figure out how much to feed by checking the ground at the end of the day to assess how many seeds remain. It’s not a problem for some seeds to be on the ground; after all, the mice have to eat too! But there shouldn’t be an abundance of them. If necessary, cut back on how much you dispense in the morning.

Some years ago, many ornithologists were also quite concerned about bird feeding and wanted people to stop. They worried about the spread of disease among birds in close contact day after day, and they also felt it made birds more vulnerable to predation by hawks. Again, such situations can be easily addressed.

First of all, no feeder should be much more than 9-12 feet from shrubs and/or small trees, or at least a brush pile, where birds can have a chance to escape a hawk attack. That distance provides a barrier to prevent Gray Squirrels from jumping from the plants or brush pile to the feeder (a squirrel can jump about 8 feet horizontally), but it’s close enough for a bird to make a prompt dash to safety.

If there aren’t woody plants near your feeder pole, you should consider placing a fast-growing evergreen (such as Photinia serrulata) close by. Evergreen shrubs and trees are better than deciduous woody plants as they provide cover all the year around.

However, the best cover for birds is provided by a nearby brush pile. Small birds can navigate through the interlocking branches and twigs to reach the safety of the interior of the pile, while the larger hawk is unable to get through the small openings.

[For a free brochure on brush piles that I wrote several years ago for the Virginia Department of Forestry, please contact me at marlenecondon@aol.com]

To avoid the spread of disease among birds at feeders, you should watch for sick animals. They can be recognized by their sluggishness and hesitation to fly away from food.

If you notice a bird behaving this way, you should take down all of your feeders, empty them completely, and then wash them well with plenty of soap and water to wash away microorganisms. Rinse the feeders well and let them air dry completely, preferably in sunlight, before refilling them.

Healthy birds will move off during this time to find food elsewhere (in your natural landscaping, I hope), and the sick bird will die more quickly, relieving it of its misery.

In addition to believing that bird feeding can be quite helpful to birds, I also believe that birds—via bird feeders—can be quite helpful to us.

More than 20 years ago now, I took care of my mother in my home for the last 11 months of her life. She had cancer and became bedridden about two months after I brought her to live with me.

I had placed her bed where she could watch the bird feeder on the deck. I knew she needed something to entertain her and watching birds was just the ticket!

Not only did my mom get to see birds she had never seen before, which she found interesting, but she also felt useful by filling the role of research assistant. Because I couldn’t stay right with my mother all day (there was plenty that needed to be done elsewhere in the house), she would give me a report about what I’d missed when I had been out of the room.

I was thrilled to get her observations as they added to my knowledge, and they provided us with wonderful conversations that could relieve us both of thoughts about her impending death.

One of the most meaningful things my mother did for me under these heartbreaking circumstances was to call me whenever there was a photo opportunity. One photo, of a male Northern Cardinal bathing in my deck water pan, will always bring back that day so long ago when my mom helped me to get that bird’s picture.

For some people, bird feeding has played a lasting role in family relationships under happier circumstances. Nancy, a birder I know by way of the Virginia bird list-serve, shared with me her experience as a very young child.

Her grandmother would feed Blue Jays. She’d hold up Nancy, who wasn’t even three years old yet, to see the birds eating. To this day, Nancy loves Blue Jays. They are the first kind of bird she can remember being aware of and, of course, they will always make her think of her loving grandmother who introduced Nancy to a lifelong hobby.

My only concern with this activity is when people start to believe that birds are somehow more precious than other kinds of wildlife, and then proceed to try to banish some species from around their homes.

Your environment can only support birds if it contains a tapestry of organisms living and working together to fulfill their natural roles. If you want your feathered friends to live well, don’t try to make them live in a vacuum.