by Darryl Jones
We need not have worried. An extraordinary 27,364 people completed the survey, one of the largest samples for an entirely voluntary survey ever conducted in Australia. Now, clearly, there were going to be important biases with this sample: the demographic of ABC viewers and lis-teners tends to be somewhat older, better educated, and possibly more computer-literate than the Australian norm. Even more important, people already interested in wildlife are much more likely to respond. Pleasingly, however, the proportion of respondents from each of the states was very close to their respective segment of the national population. On the other hand, though not unexpected given the emphasis on urban wildlife, more respondents were from cities than from rural communities. So, accepting all those provisos, what did the WildWatch survey tell us about feeding for (slightly older, city-dwelling, public broadcaster–supporting) Australians? A total of 28% fed birds with seed and 29% hand-fed or fed on the ground. And this was across the country: no state or territory had less than a quarter of respondents as feeders.
Enough on Australia. This exercise emphasizes the lack of even the most basic data relating to feeding activity. We are about to explore what is known from the United Kingdom and the United States, but apart from the handful of studies from Australia mentioned here, the only other quantitative information on participation rates are from New Zealand. This may simply be due to a reliance on English-language publications, of course, though I have attempted to search far and wide for relevant news. I suspect that wild bird feeding—at home at least—occurs in most places in the developed world to some extent, and is far less likely in developing regions. But these are guesses at best; we simply do not have the data. If wild bird feeding was somehow related to economic level or local community activities, is it possibly being practiced in the newly affluent suburbs of Brazil, China, and South Africa, for instance? I will examine these issues later. For the moment, however, we have to accept that our international perspective is extremely limited.
In New Zealand, for example, scientific interest in bird feeding is unusually pronounced, perhaps because of its use in supporting several species of endangered birds. This topic is explored in some detail in a later chapter because researchers have learned some critical lessons concerning the impact of supplementary feeding. As is well known, New Zealand is home to some of the most vulnerable populations of birds anywhere in the world, the result of historic habitat destruction and predation by introduced predators. As a result, this small, remote country has developed innovative and successful approaches to conservation, including the use of additional foods. Far less interest, however, has been shown in wild bird feeding gardens. In a land where awareness of the plight of so many native species is high, the fact that most of the birds encountered in backyards are typically English imports suggests that these species are coping well enough without help. Nonetheless, feeding is common, though no one really knew much about this until recently.
The New Zealand Garden Bird Survey28 single-handedly changed that deficiency. Almost entirely the work of a single person—the indefatigable Eric Spurr—and strongly supported by the government science agency Landcare Research Manaaki Whenua, this citizen science project was initiated in 2007 and has run annually ever since. The work is closely modeled on similar private garden–based surveys such as the much older Garden BirdWatch29 in the UK. The New Zealand version runs on a more modest scale with around 3000 participants from throughout the country sending in information on the birds they see at home. As with the other garden bird surveys, observers provide invaluable data on trends in populations and insights into what are largely urban birds that would be simply impossible to obtain by other means. In addition to questions about birds, respondents are also asked about their pets and gardening practices and, of course, whether they feed birds. The national participation average over the seven annual surveys up to the latest in 2014 has remained very close to 70%. This is certainly a comparatively high participation rate but not that unexpected in light of the unavoidable sources of bias already discussed.
Building on Eric Spurr’s general findings for New Zealand, in 2013 researcher Josie Galbraith conducted some of the most detailed studies of feeding attempted anywhere.30 Josie employed a carefully designed questionnaire that was mailed to randomly selected households in the six largest cities spread throughout the two main islands of New Zealand. Given its relevance to this book, we will be delving into the findings of this important research many times. At the moment, however, we will report simply the participation rate determined by Josie: 63% of all respondents reported feeding birds, though her response rate was only 26%. Again, while this figure has probably been boosted by the greater likelihood that feeders would respond more often than nonfeeders, it seems clear that over half the households in New Zealand are feeding birds.
Several recent and important studies from the United Kingdom and the United States respectively are worth mentioning here because they, along with the New Zealand work, were focused investigations of feeding at quite specific locations—and are hopefully evidence of a new level of interest in these issues. The first study was conducted in the city of Reading in southern England by Melanie Orros and Mark Fellowes.31 Among many significant findings based on interviews with over 500 people, they obtained a figure of 55% of households feeding birds. A similar examination of the English city of Leeds found feeding rates varying from 38% to 70% across 18 neighborhoods.32
In surprisingly rare US work on this topic, Christopher Lepczyk and coresearchers investigated regional differences in feeding practices among households in Michigan and Arizona.33 They found important differences between the two areas, with an average of 66% of Michigan residents feeding birds compared to 43% in Arizona.
All the surveys mentioned so far have been constrained and biased in some ways, all understandably and almost inevitably given the small scale of the studies and the typically modest levels of funding involved. While all provide important indications of the extent of participation in bird feeding for the places surveyed, it would be silly to extrapolate these findings too far. For reliable statistics on feeding activities at national scales, enormous resources would be required, something more appropriate at the level of governments. Thankfully—and rather unexpectedly—such national surveys do exist for the United States and the United Kingdom, providing us with the best picture of feeding at the scale of an entire country. In both cases, the feeding component was a minor part of much broader investigations. Nonetheless, the inclusion of this topic among the aims of the research suggests some level of formal recognition of this pastime within the two countries involved.
Since 1955, the Federal US Fish and Wildlife Service has undertaken regular surveys to gauge levels of public involvement in a range of outdoor recreational activities across the nation. The National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation provides data on trends and details such as the amount of money spent and whether the activity occurred at home or away, and has useful state-by-state comparisons.34 The 2011 edition was the twelfth and is currently the most recent of these surveys to be released, with the one before it appearing in 2006. The results are gold for researchers as well as those involved in wildlife management, and each new survey is awaited with great antici-pation. We can certainly include researchers interested in bird feeding among this group.
Following methodology established for the 1991 survey, the 2011 version was conducted by the US Census Bureau and involved personal interviews with an astounding 48,600 households from all states, followed by smaller samples from particular target groups. This laborious process ensures that “everyone” (meaning samples from all social, economic, and racial groups) is included, not just those that actually fish, hunt, or feed. For our present purposes, this really matters. Wildlife feeding is included in the section covering “Observing, Feeding, and Photographing Wildlife” and is reported separately for those participating at home or away. For example, in 2011 the total number of particip
ants engaged in these general activities was 72 million, although fully 95% of them did so at home.35 Of these, an astounding total of 53 million people reported feeding wildlife, almost exclusively birds. These figures equate to a national participation rate in bird feeding of 74% for the United States. Given the sound methodology used, this is probably the most reliable rate so far reported.
The national picture for the United Kingdom is similarly derived from large-scale, government agency–instigated surveys—three in this case, though each had rather different objectives. The UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a report in 2002 entitled Working with the Grain of Nature,36 a proposal for addressing a variety of environmental problems through increased community engagement in activities such as wildlife gardening. Among the comprehensive material presented was the estimation that 60% of British households with a garden feed wild birds, a practice identified by the UK government as a key indicator of the health of urban biodiversity.
The second UK survey—CityForm37—was a large multidisciplinary investigation of economic, social, and environmental sustainability of urban environments. This major questionnaire-based study sampled households from five large cities across Britain (notably excluding London): Oxford, Leicester, Sheffield, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Among the fifty questions asked were several on wildlife gardening; again, possible bias was mini-mized by embedding the feeding questions within a wide range of queries about other issues. When all the data were considered as a whole (the cities were not compared separately), the CityForm survey found that 53% of participants fed birds. Note that all respondents were from major urban centers and not from smaller towns or rural areas, and that the response rate of returned surveys was 30% to 40%.
Finally, the largest UK survey of relevance here is the annual Survey of English Housing, a government-sponsored study of general household characteristics, activities, and attitudes.38 Like the US Fishing and Hunting Survey, it is based on face-to-face interviews, in this case, around 20,000 respondents chosen randomly from across the country. The feeding data, from the 2001/2002 edition, which also included some wildlife gardening questions, yielded a figure of 64%.
Let’s bring this discussion on feeding participation to a simple conclusion. In the end, we have only a handful of studies that have published estimates of the proportion of feeders among the communities studied, and these vary considerably in scale and reliability. I would place the two large-scale interview-based surveys—the US Fishing and Hunting and the UK English Housing surveys—in a “best estimates” category, for both the sound nature of their methods and their truly national coverage.39 This suggests that the figures 74% for the United States and 63% for the United Kingdom are probably close to the actual situation. The other studies mentioned offer important insights into feeding participation over more limited areas, although the figures—ranging from 37% to 75%—are likely to be somewhat higher than reality. What is far more important than these lifeless percentages, however, is the staggering scale of feeding they represent: going on the most recent data, that’s around 53 million households in the United States and 13 million in the United Kingdom who spend their money to provide food for wild birds. That’s going to amount to a lot of cash. Indeed, recent estimates indicate that US households spent something like $4 billion on bird food and an additional $10 million on associated equipment such as feeders and nest boxes.40 In the UK the best estimates of seed sales are $440 million and a further $220 million for continental Europe.41 (The evolution of this specialist industry will be explored in the following chapter.)
Of course, what most of this money is being spent on is bird food— mountains of it. In the United States, feeders distribute 450 million kilograms (990 billion pounds) of seed each year, while Britons offer 60 million kilograms (132 million pounds) to their avian visitors.42 And this is just the commercial products. Bread, for example, is still among the most widely used food for birds. Josie Galbraith found this item to be the main type of food distributed to garden birds in New Zealand, with a total of over 5 million loaves being consumed.43 One sobering, even astonishing, statistic, calculated by Gillian Robb and her colleagues, is that the amount of seed distributed in the United Kingdom each year could sustain a theoretical population of 30 million Great Tits, one of the most abundant garden species.44 This is six times the actual population of the species! In a similar vein, Melanie Orros and Mark Fellowes calculated the energy component of the foods supplied by feeders in Reading.45 This pioneering study accounted for all food types provided, which included bread, kitchen scraps, and suet, as well as all the usual seeds. Their meticulous analyses found that the average Reading household provided 628 kilocalories of energy per day, and that this, extrapolated to the entire country, was capable of supporting about 71 million birds of the ten commonest feeder species. And that, again, was around twice the estimated national population size of these species. As an interesting (but very relevant) sideline, these researchers also calculated that if the local gray squirrels pinched only one-tenth of the food, it would be sufficient to support a minimum of a million of these animals, even if they ate nothing else.
If most of this food is actually being consumed by wild birds (leaving aside the squirrel quotient), doesn’t that simply mean that they need it, that our feeding is supporting local populations? Or does more food lead to more birds, either attracted to the feeder in the short term or eventually, by an increase in the number of offspring produced or perhaps because of better survival over winter? Indeed, what is the effect of this additional food on the birds we are feeding? And what about the other so-called nontarget species that inevitably take advantage of the foods in supply? Be they grackles, feral pigeons, or jays—let alone rats and raccoons—feeders almost always attract some species that are simply not welcome. And predators, too, like Sparrowhawks and Sharp-shinned Hawks, as well as the neighbor’s cat?
If we are honest and attentive, it doesn’t take long to come up with a set of potentially unsettling questions. For an innocent, feel-good pastime, a private and satisfying activity that appears to do plenty of good, surely these concerns are unfounded? Don’t we know enough already?
So What’s the Problem?
For most feeders, it’s fairly easy to carry on and enjoy your hobby, content in the knowledge that the birds seem to be happy, the food is being eaten, and only last Thursday you saw your first (nominate latest “table tick’” species). These are among the privileges of unofficial membership in the international wild bird feeders club, a worldwide collective of dis-parate individuals focused primarily on their own backyard. It’s just that now we know that an awful lot of backyards together represent a very large change in a fundamental component of any habitat: the diversity and amount of food. As well as enjoying the many benefits associated with feeding birds, feeders also need to accept that this practice is highly likely to change things.
We are probably all aware of the main general concerns associated with feeding. We may even have read articles and blogs that discuss these issues and the debates and discussions that follow.46 Do birds become dependent? Does feeding spread disease? Should I feed during the warmer months? These questions, and many others, are important and require properly reasoned responses. There are endless personal opinions out there, but we need the advice and pronouncements to be sound and scientific. While much remains to be investigated, enormous advances have been made recently in our understanding of the role and influence of feeding. Much of this vital research, however, remains somewhat hidden away in the scientific literature with relatively little being translated for the rest of us. This body of work now allows us to be critical in our assessment of these serious questions and of the various answers that are available.
This book has been written with the objective of increasing understanding of wild bird feeding and promoting best practice for the benefit of both the people and the birds involved. There are, of course, some people who are utterly opposed to thi
s practice and have advocated for it to be stopped and banned. Some of this opposition is well reasoned and championed by knowledgeable and committed people with a genuine concern for the welfare of the birds. And some is otherwise.
In 2002 the Wall Street Journal became an unexpected participant in the discussions of bird feeding with the publication of a front-page article by staff journalist James P. Sterba.47 Published on 27 December (while millions of Americans were participating in the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count), Sterba’s title left little to the imagination:
American Backyard Feeders May Do Harm to Wild Birds
With the subtitle:
Feeding Wild Birds Lures Pests, Predators, Causing Illness and Distorting Populations
If you can, I urge you to track down this article, not because of the quality of the writing and certainly not as an exemplar of excellence in in-vestigative journalism. Rather, I rate this as the highest-profile summary of the main arguments typically fielded against wild bird feeding. While there were plenty of impassioned responses to the article at the time (notably from John Fitzpatrick and André Dhondt of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology, and blogger Laura Erickson),48 considering the issues articulated in this article provides a suitable guide to whether our understanding has improved in the time since the article appeared. In effect, this entire book is an attempt to evaluate and respond to the issues—some legitimate, some just provocative—raised by Sterba’s piece. The outcome will be a guide to how much we really know and how much we don’t.
Where Are We Going with This?
We started this journey with the arrival of those birds at my table. As we will see, there are lots of reasons why we feed wild birds, but at the heart of this activity is the experience. It is something about the participating, the interaction, as well as the helping and learning. These complex motivations will be explored in Chapter 8 (“Reasons Why We Feed”), describing some of the most recent and illuminating studies to have been conducted in this field.