In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why bird feeding is mostly for us, and the handful of moments when it actually tips the scales for birds

• What forty years of FeederWatch data reveal about shifting ranges, feeder dominance, and the bird that definitely should not be bossing everyone around

• How to keep your yard from becoming an ecological trap, plus the best way to feed birds that doesn't involve a feeder at all

• 00:02 - Feeding Birds: Myths and Misconceptions

• 01:24 - The Importance of Bird Feeders and Their Impact

• 12:00 - The Importance of Bird Baths and Native Gardens

• 25:15 - Understanding Bird Feeding Practices and Their Impact

• 29:31 - Understanding Bird Feeding: Myths and Practices

Timestamp Disclosure
These timestamps were generated using AI and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided for accessibility and reference purposes only and may not perfectly reflect the original audio.

Dr. Scott Taylor (Excerpt)

There are things people feed birds that are not good for them. You know, feeding ducks bread is, it's like calorically not good for them at all.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

I think that's my biggest pet peeve, like of all.

Dr. Scott Taylor

So annoying.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

It's so annoying. And I try to be nice about it.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Bird feeders bring us joy.

The feeling of providing birds with food, be it seeds, nectar or insects, and having them visit close to our windows is really hard to explain until you've fed birds or watched birds at bird feeders, it lets us get to know them, it helps us understand them. There really is something special about the act of offering food, whether it's to friends, your family or to birds.

It may not be surprising then that feeding birds is popular. More than 55 million Americans feed birds, making it one of the country's most popular hobbies, second only maybe to gardening.

And all of those bird feeders fuel a 5 plus billion dollar industry in the United States alone. From the feeders themselves to the food that we put in them. And more recently, bird feeders equipped with video cameras and AI.

Given the number of people feeding birds, it's natural to wonder about the impacts. Which brings us to the topic of today's episode. Okay, but are bird feeders helping or hurting?

To answer this question, we'll talk to Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, the director of Project Feeder Watch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Coincidentally, Project Feeder Watch is celebrating its 40th year, making it one of the longest running participatory science programs on the planet.

And we encourage you to get involved. No feeder necessary. In this episode, we go well beyond just what to put in your feeders.

We'll talk about the real risks that come with attracting birds to your yard. From domestic cats to window collisions to disease.

And what you can do to make sure your feeder isn't becoming what scientists call an ecological trap. We'll also get into some of the surprising blind spots in the science.

For example, that common advice about where to place your feeder relative to a window. It turns out there isn't as much peer reviewed evidence behind it as you might think. And Olivia's team is actively working to change that.

And we'll discuss what 40 years of feeder Watch data has revealed about how bird populations are changing and why that matters.

After the break, Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot joins us to chat birds, feeders and how best to engage in the centuries long activity of feeding our feathered friends. Stay with us. Well, welcome back everyone. I'm excited to be joined by Olivia this Morning. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Of course. Why don't we start with a bit of a history lesson?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Feeding birds is an ancient tradition going back thousands and thousands of years.

One example that I wanted to share with your listeners today is that in the Hindu writings of the Vedic period, we read that offering food for birds and animals is one of the five great daily sacrifices which is intended to foster spiritual development. And this practice still continues today.

I also read about how ancient Egyptians tasked priests with protecting fields for ibises, which were considered sacred.

And the first recorded instance of feeding wild birds for enjoyment was a 6th century Scottish monk who reportedly tamed a wild robin by hand feeding it. So we see so many examples over thousands of years of bird feeding having an important place in culture and in society.

And so caring for birds by provisioning supplemental food has been part of our cultures for generations.

And over time, this practice has evolved from offering table scraps and the occasional seed to becoming an enormously popular hobby, second only to maybe gardening. So it's not new, but the scale at which we do it is more recent.

Dr. Scott Taylor

It's true.

Like as people get in, if they've never fed birds, then they get into it, it really, they develop this affinity for it that is more than just like, I like seeing the birds, there's this piece of care and love of these wild creat.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Bird feeding has always been supplementary, right? Like, birds eat what we offer in addition to the foods that they find elsewhere in their habitats.

And so for the most part, feeding birds is for us, feeding birds is really for us. And there are some instances in which actually feeding birds can be very, very helpful to them, namely in the case of resource scarcity, right?

So if there's an extreme drought, there are few plants that are thriving, insect populations are low. Sometimes supplemental feeding can be really useful. The same is true for extreme winter weather.

So during periods of heavy ice and snow, especially when the ground is covered and difficult to access, feeding birds can help local bird populations survive and thrive.

Dr. Scott Taylor

What should we be careful about then?

I mean, we can get into the, what should we feed them later, but what are the things we need to be careful about if we're going to go out of our way to offer food, whether that's seeds or in the case of hummingbirds, like sugar water, feeding.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Birds is an act of love, it's an act of compassion, where we're feeding the feathered friends who are visiting our yards. And just like when you meet a new friend, you ask them over for dinner, Right. It's kind of like that.

And you wouldn't offer dinner in a dangerous environment. You wouldn't offer dinner on dirty plates.

Dr. Scott Taylor

No.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

So these are our friends. We want to invite them over to have a safe, enjoyable meal. So we don't want our bird feeders to become ecological traps. Right.

We don't want to lure birds into an environment where they're inherently unsafe. So the first thing that comes to mind is domestic cats.

So if you have domestic cats roaming your yard, they're on the prowl, they're looking for birds. They're probably going to be pretty psyched that you've got a bird feeder out attracting birds.

And some of those birds that are coming in to feed at your feeder might become targets for those domestic cats. So we definitely want to keep our indoor cats indoors. Another thing that comes to mind is the increased risk of bird glass collisions.

So unfortunately, birds do have a really hard time perceiving glass as an obstacle. They see glass as a space that they can fly through.

And so sometimes if we put up feeders and we attract birds to our yards to feed, they can encounter birds, windows or other glassy surfaces and unfortunately run into them. And those collisions are very dangerous for birds. And bird glass collisions are one of the top risks that birds are facing today.

So common practice, we want to keep our bird feeders either within 3ft of a window or more than 30ft away from a window. Now, intriguingly, this rest practice is not grounded in all that much peer reviewed scientific evidence.

So what we're actually doing at Feeder Watch right now is running a study among feeder watchers to help us document bird glass collisions during the feeder watch monitoring season, which runs from November through April.

And then folks are also telling us in great detail what their windows look like, how big they are, what direction they face, what types of mitigation strategies they have or have not used to prevent collisions.

We're going to put all this information together to develop much more robust best practices about how to prevent prevent bird glass collisions generally and where to put your feeders relative to windows. Bird feeders, unfortunately are a reservoir for pathogens that contribute to the spread of disease among birds. We need to clean our bird feeders.

And I am afraid that many folks, many of those 55 million Americans who are bird feeding, don't clean their bird feeders. It's not well known that you need to do that. It's not thought about.

And I think if we thought about our avian fear friends as visitors who are over to share a meal with us, we would think differently about that, and we would consider best practices. So why is it that we have to clean our feeders? So birds are crowding together at feeders.

So if any one of them is carrying a disease like house finch eye disease or avian pox, it's very easy for that bird to transmit that disease, to pass it along to one of the other individual birds sharing that feeder. They're just all together in close practice. I have a toddler, he's in daycare. They share so many germs.

My kid, I swear, is constantly sick, and it's because they're all hanging out in close proximity and they don't have the opportunity to wash their hands because they're two and three years old, and they're not thinking to do that. And birds are not washing their feet or their bills between feeder visit and feeder visit. And so we need to be mindful of that.

We also know that pathogens can hang out in dust and debris. That's why it's so important to clean our homes and to regularly dust surfaces and mop floors, that it's good for us to remove those allergens.

But the dust and the debris also contain pathogens like bacteria and viruses that we want to remove from our home so we don't get sick. So similarly, bird feeders get dirty. They get covered in dust, the holes in the bits of stuff and broken peanuts they sit there.

And as they sit there, they can accumulate pathogens. So we definitely want to clear out the debris.

Bird seed can also get wet, especially after rainy spells, and that can harbor the growth of mildew and mold. Sugar water can also get moldy. So this applies to hummingbird feeders as well. So there's a lot of potential for disease.

And that sounds like I'm being rarely discouraging, like, oh, my goodness, there's no way to keep your bird feeders clean. You're having your friends for dinner on dirty plates. No. There are things you can do to help. So number one, you gotta clear out the dust and debris.

That's the most important thing any of us can do.

Take your bird feeder down at least every two weeks or maybe every two to three times that you're refilling seed, knock out all that dust and debris and give it a good scrub. Here's where it gets a little bit trickier. In an ideal world, we would all clean our feeders after we give them a scrub with diluted bleach.

That would be the best way to kill all of the pathogens. That are problematic for birds. Realistically, I think that's really hard for people. Not everyone keeps bleach. Not everybody wants to have bleach.

We have to be very careful as parents, my husband and I, to not keep stuff like that within my kids reach. So I totally get that people might not want to have that around. There are other options.

You can clean with soap and you can clean with vinegar and those things will help. Hot water alone will help. A dishwasher is great. If you can take your feeder apart and throw it in the dishwasher, that's great.

I want to emphasize that if you use something like detergent, it's really important to carefully rinse the feeder so that there's not a film of detergent left on the feeder that a bird might accidentally lick.

And if you use bleach, you want to make sure to let that dry completely so that there's no wet bleach, because that can also be harmful to birds when you put it back up.

But if I want folks to take away, one thing would be if you can at least take it apart, knock out the debris and give it a good scrub, you are doing goodbye birds. And if you can kick it up a notch and use diluted bleach, that's even better.

But I totally understand if you can only get partway, that's still hugely helpful.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, I think those are all really good recommendations for sure. And it is. I like thinking about it as like inviting friends over.

I think that'll actually help people just be a little bit more motivated even to do the knocking out the dust and dusting off the feeders. What about bird baths? Can you walk us through the safety and upkeep side of those?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Yeah, bird baths are great. And in fact, bird baths are almost a more important supplementary resource for birds in some context. Right.

If you think about bird feeders and when they're most valuable. As we've discussed, times of resource scarcity are when bird feeders actually might tip the scales and make a difference for local bird populations.

So extreme drought, extreme winter weather, such as periods of heavy rain or snow, these are the moments to pull out your bird feeder. This is when it counts, this is when it's actually helpful.

Assuming that you are following best practices and not unintentionally creating an ecological trap, Cleaning bird bath is also important. It's harder to clean bird bath. Right.

If you've got a big stone bird bath in your backyard, you're not going to disassemble it and throw it in your dishwasher. So you just need to make sure that you're carefully scrubbing it out.

And again, every so often, if you have the opportunity to disinfect, that's good. But we really want to make sure that that water is not staying still for long periods of time, especially in hot weather. Right.

If you've got a small pool of water that's heating up over time, it's going to get gross. We just know that. So a lot of this comes pretty fast, right? A lot of this comes down to common sense.

If you look at your hummingbird feeder and it's only been two days and you plan to clean it on Friday, but it's got bits of mold in it, take it down, give it a good bath. Like a lot of this just comes down to being observant and making sure that we're doing right by the birds that visit our yard.

Dr. Scott Taylor

One thing that can really help let birds know that it's there is if the water is moving, right? So there's some of these little solar powered pumps that will move water in a bird bath and then birds will hear that and come in.

But that movement of the water also can keep it less stagnant and prevent the growth of certain algaes and things. I mean, you still need to clean stuff out. But having moving water can also be a good piece of that birdbath puzzle.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

There are lots of bird baths that include some sort of moving water component. Other folks might be interested in using something like an outdoor pond with a fountain feature as a birdbath. Birds love fountains.

And if the water is moving, the need to clean the water greatly reduces because we're just not providing an opportunity for those pathogens and the algae to grow.

Dr. Scott Taylor

What foods are best? The black oil sunflower seed, is that really the most popular food out there or what other foods are available?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

So apparently a few decades ago, before bird feeding was as popular as it as it is now, and the industrialization of bird feeding really picked up in the 80s and 90s.

A US agricultural scientist, I don't know his exact background, traveled to Russia because he heard about these fabled black oil sunflower seeds that had a 40% oil content over the 28% oil content of the gray striped sunflower seeds that we had in the US and he was traveling through Russia and given a tour of the fields and he had a Russian interpreter assigned to him. And he was very excited about these seeds and he asked if he could take some back to the US and he was told absolutely not. These are a state secret.

You cannot have these sunflower seeds.

But his Russian interpreter, who was eating them as a snack, overheard this conversation and she folded the sunflower seeds up in her napkin and snuck them to him.

And he shipped them back to his research Lab in Fargo, North Dakota and propagated the black oil sunflower from the 100 seeds that were intended to be a snack. And now today we have black oil sunflower seeds.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Wow. I had no idea it was such an intriguing origin.

The drama and probably very annoying for the Russian scientists that developed the black oil sunflower seed.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Probably.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Okay, so black oil sunflower seeds illegally, they're great, but they're here now. Birds love them. What else?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

First, the food that you offer birds should reflect the birds that you want to attract, right? Not all birds eat the same kinds of food.

So we actually do have a really great resource on our website, an interactive tool that allows you to explore what types of food and what types of feeders attract various feeder birds.

So if you were really excited about attracting northern cardinals to your yard or feeding dark eyed juncos, you could actually explore, given where you live and what types of feeders you might want to buy and put up at your yard or your count site, what food you could offer to bring in those species. So highly recommend folks explore that tool. It's really fun. I also think it's important to remember that feeders are not the only way to feed birds.

And in fact, they're not the best way to feed birds. The best way to feed birds is to plant a native garden. And this is true whether you live in a cityscape.

I lived in West LA during my postdoc at UCLA and I'd only had a balcony, but I still tried in that balcony to plant native gardens. Even container gardens are helpful to birds.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, I mean, and I said something really similar on a previous episode just from a few weeks ago where we talked to Doug Tallamy about, okay, what makes a yard a bird paradise and that feeders are one piece of it.

But if you really want to make your yard a bird paradise, you have to plant native plants to attract those insects and provide food for birds and potentially nesting resources for birds. So yeah, totally agree with you on that. Is there a time when you should pause feeding or stop feeding or change the way you're feeding?

Bird flu is impacting about 17% of the species of birds in North America right now. And I'm sure people are curious if there's anything they should be doing with respect to bird feeders and bird flu.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

I Get that question a lot at Project Feeder Watch. Yeah. So in general, if you observe a sick bird at your feeders, you should take your feeders down for a short period of time.

We recommend taking your feeders down for two weeks, giving them a good clean, and then putting them back up. Ideally, you would also disinfect your feeders. Now, something to keep in mind is that the two weeks, it's not based on any science. Right.

We're guessing that two weeks is enough time for that sick bird to have left your yard, moved on from your campsite, or passed away. That might not be the case.

And it's also possible that that advice is inherently flawed because by taking down one feeder, birds might congregate in another spot. Maybe your neighbor didn't notice the sick bird. Right.

And so the sick bird is moving from your feeder to your neighbor's feeder, back and forth all day long. You take your feeder down, and now it's spending more time with birds in a more tightly crowded, more congregated setting.

And that's actually riskier. So that's a hard one. I think the two week rule makes sense, but there is a question there that I think is ripe for discovery.

Putting the idea out there for grad students. How long is long enough to prevent transmission of diseases that birds carry? How long should we keep our feeders down?

Dr. Scott Taylor

Can you tell us a little bit more about Project Feeder Watch and how people get involved?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Sure.

So Project Feeder Watch is an international participatory science monitoring program that helps us keep tabs on winter birds in Canada and the United States. And folks can sign up anytime between November and April. And we keep track of birds on a weekly basis throughout the winter season.

So folks who participate in Feeder Watch conduct a two day count on a weekly basis from November through April. The two day count allows us to to keep tabs on the birds that are in your yard and shared with your neighbors and who make our communities home.

The count protocol is fairly straightforward, but it's different than some of the other surveys that folks might have already been engaged in, such as ebird, the Christmas bird count over your two day count, you keep track of all the different species that visit your count site. And the count site could have a feeder, but it doesn't have to. And we record the maximum number of birds that we observe at any given time.

And then on our end, we use all of this data to keep track of birds and to monitor trends over time and learn more about interesting behavioral interactions and relationships with habitat. Feeder Watch is an Incredibly powerful data set because it goes back 40 years.

It's one of the longest running participatory science monitoring programs in modern times.

And this year we're celebrating our 40th anniversary with lots of exciting events and featuring the voices of longtime fear watchers who have been doing this for 25, 30, almost 40 years. In some cases right from the same spot.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah. Been around that long. That's amazing, actually.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

I know.

Dr. Scott Taylor

I mean, I knew about Project Theater Watch, but I didn't know it had been running for 40 years now. That's incredible.

You started as the head of Project Feeder Watch relatively recently, but what are some of the most interesting insights that, that you think have come out of this, this really long term data set of participatory science?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

The most important story that Feeder Watch tells is of the changing abundance of wintertime birds.

And we're seeing across many different common feeder birds that populations are declining, that we don't see as many birds in the flocks that visit our count sites as we did 20 or 30 years ago. That's important because that dovetails with many other studies that are documenting the decline of North American AV fauna.

Because birth Feeder Watch collects data in a very different way than other long term and participatory science monitoring programs. Telling the same story.

With this novel data set that goes back so far, in most cases, farther than other examples of monitoring programs tells us that we have this story right. Birds are declining, and I think that that will and does motivate conservation action.

We also have learned some really interesting things about bird behavior. Which species are dominant or more aggressive at feeders, for example? And we've learned more about range expansions in recent times.

Where they spend their winters is changing.

Dr. Scott Taylor

And then you brought up this dominance research that's been done using Project Feeder Watch observations. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

So a few years ago, Project Feeder Watch expanded to include behavioral interactions.

So we don't have a data set on behavioral interactions going back to 1986, the very beginning of modern day Project Feeder Watch, but we do have a robust data set that covers several years that includes not only the counts, but also the interactions between birds in count sites.

So feeder watchers are encouraged to not only record the total number of birds of each species that they observe during their two day count, but also the behavioral interactions that they observe between those birds. And those could be birds of the same species or birds of different species. And we're primarily focused on two types of behavior interactions.

One, displacement and two, predation so displacement occurs when one bird swoops in and displaces or kicks out another bird.

And this might be because the aggressive bird or the more dominant bird wants a perch or the best spot on the feeder, or that really big glossy black oil sunflower seed. Right. So there are lots of things that birds are competing for in their environment. And displacement happens quite commonly.

And by asking feeder watchers to tell us when they observe displacement and noting which species are displacing each other, that will help us learn more about the relationships that birds have with each other and dominance hierarchies. In these bird communities. Predation is more self explanatory. We all know that there are birds of prey. They feed on smaller birds.

In the context of the feeder water data set, most of our predation records are of hawks, such as sharp shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks, swooping in and grabbing birds near feeders. But it's interesting to learn more about how predation occurs and which species are successful and which species are less successful at escaping.

And so we have this really cool data set that helps us explore those. And a few years ago, Feeder watch actually published a dominance hierarchy looking at which birds were most successful at feeders.

And for the most part, we found that size was a good predictor of which species are better at displacement and more successful in predation. But that wasn't always the case.

Dr. Scott Taylor

There are things people feed birds that are not good for them. You know, feeding ducks bread is. It's like calorically not good for them at all.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

I think that's my biggest pet peeve.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Like, of all things, so annoying.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

It's so annoying. And I try to be nice about it.

I try to provide advice that doesn't make people feel bad for feeding ducks because it is something that we've been doing for a very long time. It's something that we were taught to do as children. I remember being handed bags of bread to feed ducks.

I remember going out and throwing bread into the water to feed ducks on Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and Madison, where I grew up. But it's not good for them. And it leads to horrible water quality issues.

If you care about clean water and healthy fish populations and healthy birds. Don't feed bread to ducks.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, no bread to ducks. What are some other things people feed birds that probably shouldn't be on the menu?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Some folks will just put out their leftovers to feed birds and other wildlife. I don't think that that's particularly common. But we, we do Hear about that. That's not a great idea.

Some folks think that all table scraps are good for birds and it would be better to feed birds and other wildlife are table scraps than nothing at all. Table scraps are not a great idea.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Be intentional about it. We have a lot of corvid lovers listening. And what should they know about feeding crows and ravens if that's something that they're interested in?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Yeah, that's a great question. So we just had the amazing Dr. Kaylee Swift join feeder Watchers for a birdcam watch party a few weeks ago.

She's a phenomenal science communicator and knows everything there is to know about crows and ravens and other corvids. And she had this to share. Her advice was that you don't want a murder of crows, right?

You don't want to be the house that has 50, 100 crows roosting at. At dusk. You don't want to be that house. No, it's not great for you. It's not great for your neighbors. Not the vibe. Not the vibe we're looking for.

We really want to be targeting the one individual or the. The paired couple of birds that inhabit our yard, that make our neighborhood their home. So a little goes a long way.

She recommends being patient and building that trust over time. She also recommends just giving food rather than other gifts.

Some folks have heard that crows and ravens are attracted to shiny things or maybe would appreciate a gift. And I'm sure that there are relationships, true relationships between ravens or crows or other corvids in people in which gift giving is.

Is common and valued by both parties. But birds can be scared of new things. And Kayleigh noted that that might be particularly true for ravens.

And so you could actually spook a bird you're intending to build this bond with by offering a shiny gift that it has never seen before. So food is preferred. She recommends unshelled nuts or soaked pet kibble and just a small fistful. Again, this is always a supplement.

Bird feeding is always a supplement to what birds find naturally. That goes a long way.

So offering that, making it clear that you are the gift giver, putting that out and creating that bond will bring those beloved corvids closer to you.

Dr. Scott Taylor

People really love corvids. But your point about not wanting to have a murder of crows roosting in a tree outside your house is a good one. My.

The woman who cuts my hair a couple years ago was like, what's. What's going on in our neighborhood?

And they had, I Guess there was a huge murder of crows just roosting all along their street, and everybody's car was whitewashed the next morning. Like, regularly. Yeah. Which is annoying.

All right, we've reached the part of the show that we call that's BS or that's bird stuff, where we give our guests an opportunity to debunk a myth that ruffles their feathers. So, Olivia, what do you want to call BS On?

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

So many folks think that birds do not have a sense of smell, that they do not forage using a sense of smell, that they might have excellent sight, they might be able to tap into the map of the stars to navigate, but they're just not good at smelling their environment, and that is just not true. Some birds actually have an incredibly acute sense of smell and do use that to forage and to find food.

Seabirds such as albatrosses and petrels, for example, find food by detecting dimethyl sulfide, which is released by zooplankton.

And so as they're flying over the vast expanses of our world's oceans, they actually essentially perceive a chemical map, mountains and valleys of dimethyl sulfide. And that allows them to navigate toward places where fish might be congregating and to feed, which is amazing.

Dr. Scott Taylor

It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have a whole episode coming up on birds sense of smell in a few weeks, so thanks for the free commercial. Appreciate it.

We're gonna go on the deep dive into all of the things you started talking about there, and it's. Yeah, we're really excited about it. Well, thanks for joining us. We've covered so much ground, but there's so much more to talk about.

We'll have to have you back. And for our audience, if you want to hear more about feeding, leave a comment with your questions. So thanks for joining us, Olivia.

I really appreciate you taking the time.

Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Thanks so much for having me. And I hope that this encourages folks to feed birds and maybe even sign up for feeder Watch.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, definitely. Birds are dinosaurs, and around here, we like our snacks. So we end each episode with a dinosaur nugget. Today's nugget.

More than 55 million Americans feed birds, fueling a five plus billion dollar industry. And the practice goes back thousands of years across cultures worldwide. But here's what the science tells us.

For the most part, feeding birds is for us, not for them. Birds generally find enough food in their habitats, especially if you make your yard a habitat, like we discussed on a previous episode.

Okay, but what makes a yard a bird? Paradise. Feeders tip the scales during extreme conditions like drought, heavy ice, or deep snow, when natural food becomes hard to access.

The rest of the time, our feeders are invitations to dinner.

And like any good host, we need to make sure we're not serving food on dirty plates, attracting predators to the table, or placing feeders where our guests might fly into a window. So the next time you fill your feeder, know that you're the one benefiting most, and that means doing it responsibly.

That's a wrap on this week's episode. Okay, but are bird feeders helping or hurting? Do you want to hear more from this episode?

Head over to okaybutbirds.com and sign up for our newsletter, the Bird Droppings. We're talking about the Good sh. T in your inbox.

Starting next week, our newsletters will have exclusive bonus clips and facts you won't find anywhere else. We'll catch you next time. Byeee.

This episode is dedicated to Dr. Emma Greig, the former director of Project Feeder Watch and a dear friend of mine and many others who we lost to cancer in December of 2024. Emma was a force of nature, taken far too soon. Miss you, Emma.

Okay, But... Birds is hosted by Scott Taylor, with production and creative by Zach Karl.

Transcript Disclosure
This transcript was generated using AI-assisted transcription and may contain errors or omissions. Please refer to the audio or video episode for the most accurate representation.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• European robin audio contributed by Matthew D. Medler, ML140049

• Cooper's hawk audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94518

• American crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843