BACKGROUND

What Do Songbirds Need to Survive?

Songbirds, like all other animals, depend on their environment for food, water and shelter. Most birds are quite particular about their habitat. Chickadees, that live in forests and nest in cavities, are hardly ever found around open fields. Some swallows on the other hand, prefer open fields. (To learn more about habitat refer to Activity : Homeless: Songbirds Need Habitat).

What Do Songbirds Eat?

The most common food are insects, seeds and berries. Insects are a very important source of protein for many songbirds. Often what a bird eats and how it collects its food can be determined by looking at the size and shape of its beak. In this activity, students will get an opportunity to make observations on songbirds, by attracting them to bird feeders.

Why Feed Birds?

There are many reasons why people feed birds. Mostly we just want to "help" the birds - a valid reason but one which fails to recognize that birds seldom need such help. In nature, the law of supply and demand is always working to balance the number of birds that occupy an area, against the amount of food available. A bird feeder adds to the supply and subsequently the demand. Food is important to birds at all times, but when snow or ice storms cut off their usual sources of food, feeding programs to help them through the crisis can save many lives. The food offered at a feeder does not usually replace the natural food of the birds, it simply supplements that food. If you watch the birds at a feeder, you will see that they don't sit on the feeder and eat for hours. Instead, they come and go. For every few minutes they spend at the feeder, they spend hours foraging in their territories.

Some migratory songbirds that come to rely on feeders may choose not to migrate for the winter, since they have enough food. This can be dangerous if the feeder is not replenished regularly. To avoid this problem, students should be encouraged to begin feeding in early fall and gradually stop feeding by the end of winter.

A Successful Feeder

Before we begin, the students must understand what makes a bird feeder successful - things such as location, what foods to use and what to do about predators and pests. The bird feeder should be located in an area that is easily visible to the students, but more importantly, one that offers cover and protection for the birds. A bird feeder creates an unnatural concentration of birds, often attracting unwanted guests such as cats, hawks and owls. The feeder should be close to trees and shrubs so birds can escape predators. There should be more than one source of cover because predators such as cats tend to sit under a lone shrub near a feeder and catch birds as they head for cover.

You can attach the feeder to a window ledge, a pole in the middle of the yard, or even suspend it from a tree limb. Use wire hangers to suspend the feeder so that squirrels and raccoons can't gnaw through it. If your feeder is on a post, it is a good idea to put a piece of sheet metal (a piece of stove pipe works well), near the top of the post so that squirrels, cats and raccoons can't climb it. But be careful to keep metal away from the feeding birds - the tongues of small birds have been known to freeze to metal in very cold weather.

Since the feeders will only supplement the natural food of the birds, providing a balanced diet is usually not important. While no one food contains all the essential elements for a balanced diet, several combinations come very close. Some people use natural food such as acorns, nuts, seeds and fruits gathered from the wild. Although this seems admirable, removing this food from the wild takes food away from the animals that live in the area. Some people put out table scraps for birds. Avoid sticky, messy scraps that will soil a bird's plumage and clog its nostrils. Birds will usually eat foods that look familiar, so it may take some time for them to accept new, unfamiliar offerings.

Recipes

Here is a collection of recipes of some of the most effective combinations of bird food.

No. 1 - The Cone Feeder*

Ingredients
750 ml (3 cups) of water
1 cup sugar
454 g (1 pound) beef suet
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup Cream of Wheat or oatmeal

Mix the water and sugar and bring to a boil; add the suet, peanut butter and either Cream of Wheat or oatmeal. Allow the mixture to cool. If too liquid when cooled, add more cereal. When the mixture has hardened, you can roll it into balls and place them in an onion string-bag. Or you can dip large pine cones into the mixture while it is still soft and then let it harden. The cones or onion string-bags can be hung by wire hangers.

No. 2 - Bird Cake

Ingredients
1.4 L (5.5 cups) water
1 cup grease or suet
1 cup sugar
473 ml (2 cups) cold water
2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup flour

Place the water in a large saucepan; add sugar and fat, and bring to a boil. Make a paste of the cornmeal, flour, and cold water and add it to the mixture of water, sugar and fat, stirring continually. Pour into a large, flat pan. Let cool and cut into squares to use as needed. Keep refrigerated.



No. 3 - The Old Standby*

Ingredients
2 cups beef suet
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup peanut butter

Slowly melt the suet and add the cornmeal and peanut butter. Mix and store refrigerated.

No. 4 - The National Audubon Society's mixture for insect-eating birds*

Ingredients
3/4 cup dried bread crumbs
1/2 cup dried ground meat
3/4 cup hempseed
1/2 cup millet
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup dried berries (such as currants)
908 g (2 pounds) beef suet

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly and add to melted suet.

No. 5 - Dry Seed Mix

Instead of buying commercially prepared "wild bird food" a seed mixture containing the following will be less expensive and less wasteful. The commercial mixes, unlike this one, often contain seeds that the birds do not eat.

Ingredients
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup millet
1/3 cup buckwheat
1 cup hempseed

*Food mixtures containing a high proportion of melted fats are dangerous because they become messy at temperatures above freezing. While this may be no more than a nuisance to you, greasy feathers can be disastrous for a bird. Therefore those recipes marked with an asterisk (*) should only be used when temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius. Another solution to the danger of greasy foods is to add dry soya bean flour to the mixture. The flour will absorb the free grease and keep the mixture solid and dry.

Building the Feeder

Students should try constructing simple feeders using an onion bag or pine cones as discussed in recipe No. 1. They could also try using a coconut shell cut in half and filled with food (do not feed birds coconut; it is difficult to digest and the shredded kind can be lethal) or removing one side of a milk carton and filling it with food. The ornithologist at the museum likes to build a feeder out of a tin can. Remove both ends and hang the can horizontally with wire. For a perch, put a small branch or stick through the can so that it hangs out over either end. Keep the branch in place by passing an elastic band over one end of the branch then over the other end. Fill the inside of the can with food. Students that live in colder regions of B.C. should not use this design during colder months since it uses metal. Let the students be creative, but practical, keeping in mind that the main purpose of the feeder is to attract songbirds for observation.


MATERIALS

• Building materials (large pine cones, milk cartons, onion bags)
• Food materials (according to recipes chosen)
  

PROCEDURE

1. Discuss the basic survival needs of songbirds, highlighting the birds that live in your local area (refer to the map in "Where's that Bird You Heard? "). Focus on what these songbirds eat.

2. Discuss methods of making observations of songbirds in their environment and how bird feeders will be used as a way to attract songbirds for observation.

3. Discuss the significance of bird feeders and important design and location features as outlined in the background information. Decide how many feeders the class will construct (more than one will ensure greater success in attracting songbirds).

4. Have the students decide on an appropriate design for the feeders and the type of food that will fill them.

5. Build the feeders, fill them with food and hang them in a good location. Students can watch the feeders and observe the birds that they attract. How many different kinds of birds can they see?