Talk:Bird feeding

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Aside from general tidying of the English, I changed the classification from hobby to activity. The original text referred to bird-feeding as a hobby, and explained that it could also be carried out for other reasons; once the qualification had been removed by User:Arpingstone, the definition was too narrow to be accurate. I've also removed a claim that bird-feeding is primarily urban (it is, but only because populations are concentrated in urban areas), and a claim that naturalists deprecate the activity (they certainly don't in the U.K.). Both these claims might be true in the U.S.; if so, they could be put back with suitable qualifications.

I'm not sure why two suppliers of bird-food and two manufacturers of bird-feeders are mentioned in the text (especially as there's no article for any of them); should these not be removed? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Commercial mentions removed, as you suggest - Adrian Pingstone 21:38, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Top U.S. city birds 2 pov 3 Major rewrite 4 Just a thought...

[edit] Top U.S. city birds

I've made a few minor changes to the part listing the most common birds in U.S. cities:

• Replace jackdaw with crow, because that's what we have in the U.S.
• Capitalize common names of bird species, in keeping with the normal practice in Wikipedia and elsewhere
• Note which are introduced species
• Specify House Sparrow, not sparrows in general. The House Sparrow is the common city pest, and is introduced from Europe. It is not closely related to New World sparrows, so care should be taken to distinguish (when talking about North American birds)
• Change most common birds...are to ...include because no support is given for the list, which looks "off the top of one's head". It omits several common birds (House Finch, Mourning Dove, American Robin, etc.), and obviously the prevalence of ducks and geese will depend on whether you're near water (lake, pond, marsh, etc.). Also, different cities will clearly have different birds (think of Phoenix vs. Seattle vs. Miami)
• There's no such thing as "domestic sparrow." Passer domesticus is called House Sparrow both in England and the U.S.

-- Coneslayer 23:53, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

On the West Coast, we've got Canada geese that no longer migrate. They're near water since water is everywhere (canals are just fine) but unlike ducks, they're not water-feeding birds and they don't need it. (Geese eat grass, among other things.) All up and down the West Coast there are concentrations of Canada geese that have "settled down in the suburbs" (and the urbs, as well). There's a middle-school in my area where the geese make the ballfield very hard to use with all their droppings. So yes: common birds depend on where you are, and geese are rule-breakers. [g]. Jennifer Brooks 17:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pov

I find the tone of the opening paragraph very POV. The implication is that it is somehow wrong to feed birds. Man has lived alongside wildlife for the past for the past 40,000 years or so, and to some degree influenced the evolution of species. It is not wihtout reason that we talk of House Sparrows, Barn Owls and Barn Swallows.

In the UK, the RSPB, Europe's biggest conservation organisation, gives advice and encourages feeding birds, including farmland species.Stamford spiney 6 July 2005 15:50 (UTC)

[edit] Major rewrite

I'm worried that most of this is in the form of advice, couched in authoritative terms, yet without proper citations (and some of it rather out-dated, especially in comparison with recent advice from organisations like the RSPB). I'm reluctant simply to revert (though a large-scale unilateral change like this rather calls for it), but could these matters be discussed and remedied? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I added a good bit of how-to. I hope that's not what you find objectionable. I'm one of those people who shouts "Wikipedia is not a how-to guide" on VfD (now AfD), so I understand if it is objectionable. However, what I added was intended to be somewhat common sense and can be sourced from many, many locations (and therefore passes into "common knowledge"). For example: don't put a station far from cover. Millet, in particular, will grow in your lawn below the bird feeder. Put out water, if you're in a dry area. Squirrels like bird seed. That stuff is common knowledge, but it was lacking, and we got a question at the reference desk on "how do I attract birds to my house?" I figured that the article as it was was somewhat suffering from wiki-itis (many tiny paragraphs, some repetitive, as people added their own contributions one after another). I tried to do some tense shifting and point of view shifting (linguistic POV, not content POV) to make the English read a bit better.

My own problem with the article is that it gets half a toe in the water. It starts to say that bird feeding is good or bad, but then it hasn't sources for those statements and is far too blunt. I thereby tried to say, "It's a good thing that can have unintended effects," which I think is uncontroversial, and I tried to explain that those effects are particularly the fostering of invasive species (a major problem in the US, and I imagine in Australia, too), and therefore that some people try to watch out for it. (E.g. I set up a feeder and had house sparrows hitting it. Once they found it, there was no way to discriminate, so I stopped feeding. Their population needed no help. This despite being on a major pelagian migration route.)

The biggest structural problem is that the article is misnamed. I know of no style sheet or dictionary that has "birdfeeding." It's "bird feeding." I've been too lazy and uninvolved to do a page move, though. Anyhow, if there are objections to my addition of "how to start feeding birds," I won't mourn its loss. Geogre 15:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

On the title, I assumed that that was U.S. English; isn't it?

My worry concerns quite a lot of the advice that you haven't mentioned above. For example, a number of sources that I've seen now say that feeding should continue through the year (though the type and amount of food will vary). (Concerning something that was added before your edits, it's also now suggested that mesh-contained fat-balls can trap the legs of small birds, causing injury.)

I've added {{tl:verify}} in the hope that it will attract other editors to check and edit. If you think that that's a mistaken move, feel free to remove it. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 20:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yes, a mesh suet is a very bad idea. That was before me. Year round is one of those things.... It depends on whether you're getting invasive species or not. If not, you can feed year round. If so, don't artificially prop up their populations by feeding in excess of natural food sources. Also, it depends on where you are. If you're in an urban setting, there isn't much natural food, comparatively, but if you're out near (from a bird's point of view) woods, the natural world wants birds. Birds carry seeds in their feces and help propagation. If you're in springtime, and you're near natural woods, you are at least somewhat messing with things by encouraging the birds to eat your sunflower seeds instead of the nearby mullberries. In other words, the answer is "yes, no, maybe: use your brains and know your area." I think the mesh ball for suet should be removed. It's a bad, bad idea. Further, I don't think any article ought to recommend one particular type of feeder over another. It's not the article's business, and only bad can come from it. Let's just cut any of that out. (Is "birdfeeding" one word in UK English? I've never seen it as a single word in either place. It's definitely not acceptable common usage in the US.) Geogre 00:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

"Birdfeeding" is poor English here, but that doesn't stop companies using it (like "box set"). Would you prefer "Bird feeding" or something else ("Feeding birds", "Domestic bird-feeding"...)?

Concerning the mesh balls, I'd be reluctant to remove it altogether; I've seen mention in newspapaers/magazines of the possibility of birds getting caught, but in many years of feeding birds, and talking to people who feed birds, I've never seen or heard of it actually happening. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Two words, Bird feeding, as I suppose it's a natural formulation (better than "feeding birds," I suppose). The thing about the mesh balls is that I'd remove any particulars like that. Information like that is perishable, and it also gets us into product endorsement. (One oddity in the US is that cardinals, which many feeders want very badly to see, don't visit round feeders, but they do square ones. No one has any clue why this is. I'd be reluctant to mention "square feeders are better" or to say "pole mounts are better for squirrel baffles," even though they are, because I just feel like we ought to be staying general.) I know that I have that bit about sunflower seed being the best general feed, but I don't think that's overly tendentious. (If you really want to attract the birds, use a table. Just be prepared to be feeding all the squirrels, the chipmunks, the muskrats, the mooses, the bears, and the mice, too.) Geogre 19:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Never mind on the name. I see that Bird feeding is a redirect to Birdfeeding. Not the best order, but it's functional, so I don't care. Geogre 19:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, how about Feed the birds (tuppence a bag)? Where I am, the only visitors to a bird table apart from birds are likely to be mice (though I've never seen them do it); not too many chipmunks, muskrats, moose, or bears in Oxfordshire (and we don't even see many squirrels in our village). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Give it time, man. They'll show up. :-) (In the south of the US, the woods have eyes...and feet, tails, and teeth. "Ecology" means trying to gently persuade stuff to not grow.) (I haven't got any mooses or muskrats, but in Minnesnowda there were mooses sometimes.) (Muskrats were busy with muskrat love.) Geogre 14:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just a thought...

The photo on the artice shows a big fat Wood Pigeon on a small bird table. I'm all for the Wood Pigeons and feed them in my own garden all the time (the the squriles and feral cats...) but dont you think that such a big bird on a small bird table is, well, how can i put this, out of proportion. Just a thought, and I dont really expect an answer (especally given my poor spelling). Thanks! Think outside the box 12:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)