TUPPENCE A BAG To feed or not to feed, Cal Flyn dispels the myths about feeding our garden birds
Watching the birds forage away in your garden can be a peaceful pastime, but we must ensure we're feeding them responsibly, finds Cal Flyn
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For many people, their most regular interactions with nature will take place in their own gardens. The wildlife that passes through is no less wild for their familiarity – the songbirds holding forth in the apple tree, the fox loping down the driveway at dawn, the scrabblers in the shrubbery, or the swallows nesting in the eaves.
My parents, who live in Invernessshire, have lived in the same house for over 20 years, and over this time have built up a close relationship with both their human and animal neighbours. When we speak on the phone, they often regale me with stories and updates of our avian familiars – that the crows are living in the chimney again, the red kites nesting, or that
the greylag geese are arriving back ‘in squadrons’ at the field below the house to gabble and graze.
Some are easier to love than others. The blackbird family who took up regular residence in the wood pile – they were favourites. And the friendly, fearless robin who shadows them around the garden is another. When digging over fresh ground, says Dad, the robin will ‘brush up against them’ as he waits impatiently for worms to be exposed – hopping from twig to twig, coming ‘within touching distance’ in his excitement, going so far as to perch on the handle of a fork or spade. They are not pets – and never could be – but over time, you get to know each other. So through the long, hard winter months, my parents – like an estimated 64% of households in the UK – leave out bird feed to help their friends make it through to spring. It’s Mum’s project really – over the years she has amassed a collection of feeders of different sorts and contents, as well as a wide, shallow dish of water for bathing.
The resulting scenes, watched from the kitchen window, are far more entertaining than any programme on television. Each species has its own approach – the lone robin lurks and glares and waits for a quiet moment to approach; the tiny coal tits arrive en masse and hang all which ways, including upside down, from the rungs; the great tits come barging in; the blackbirds, with their goldrimmed eyes, forage for fallen seeds below. Chaffinches, nuthatches, thrushes, blue tits, sparrows… It goes like a fair, from dawn until dusk.
So common is it in Scotland that you may be surprised to hear that not all countries believe in feeding the birds. In Australia, for example, the practise is frowned upon. Governmental and environmental authorities teach that doing so is unnecessary – even cruel – and flouting the rule can result in sizeable fines from the local council. The arguments against it are varied – some behavioural (we should not disturb their normal feeding habits), some epidemiological (feeders can act as hubs for the spread of disease), and some a simple matter of ecological caution.
In recent years, scientists have raised concerns,
noting that providing supplementary food for birds – as is recommended by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) – may be one of the largest human influences on bird populations, alongside climate change and habitat loss.
‘Feeding short-lived passerines can alter almost every aspect of their ecology, from reproductive parameters to behaviour and distribution,’ wrote Dr Valentin Amrhein of the University of Basel, in his 2013 paper on the subject. When we feed the birds, we are inadvertently participating in a vast experiment upon our fellow creatures.
Last year, scientists revealed that, over the last four decades, great tits in the UK have grown longer beaks than their Dutch counterparts. Brits spend around twice as much as mainland Europeans on bird feeders and seed – and it’s thought that this is the cause of the disparity. Birds better able to access the seed have had an evolutionary advantage, in a very unfair form of natural selection. Or unnatural selection, perhaps.
And our provision of food can favour different species over others, or change their geographical distribution. Earlier this year, a paper from the University of Exeter noted that bigger birds tended to monopolise tables, gobbling up the best food and leaving the fiddly stuff (like shelled sunflower seeds) to the little guys – which may result in species like greenfinches and sparrows benefiting at the expense of smaller tits and wrens. And in 2015, the BTO announced that blackcaps, a type of warbler associated with spring and summer, have developed a new migratory route, which has seen them increasingly overwintering in the UK over the 60 years that bird feed has been commercially available.
So, is it bad to feed the birds? Well, perhaps not. It’s true that in unusually harsh winters, those birds who have access to feed are twice as likely to survive. And those receiving food have greater reproductive success – laying more eggs, earlier, whose occupants are more likely to survive.
And there’s another plus too, if a less tangible one – we love it. For many, feeding the birds is a pleasurable, even profound experience. Wild birds are choosing to seek out your company – albeit through bribery – and through such daily interaction, our knowledge and appreciation of them grows.
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If you’d rather not feed them directly, there are other ways to help. When spring comes, consider planting birdfriendly vegetation: prickly bushes and thick climbers make for a safe hideout, while fruit trees provide a source of food through late autumn and early spring. Nestboxes are useful too, but place them high enough that cats can't reach them.
With any luck, your garden will soon be a haven for birds of all kinds. Register to take part in the annual RSPB Birdwatch (26-28 January; registration opens 12 December, rspb.org.uk), so you can help research into the changing patterns of bird life across the country.