Understanding 5 Myths about Feeding Birds
♫ December 8th, 2011 12:11 pm1. If you feed birds, they won’t migrate and will be caught in the winter cold.
Birds know when to migrate based on sunlight, weather and their natural instincts, that give the urge to migrate. It doesn’t matter how much food is available to them, in the bird feeders or where ever, when it’s time for them to go, they go. Migrating birds do need to eat though, especially during migration, and if you keep your feeders well stocked, you will get a bigger variety of birds at your feeders during migration.
2. Birds will starve if you stop feeding them in the winter, so once you start, you can’t stop.
It is best to keep your bird feeders well stocked in the winter for the hungry birds. You’ll want them to think of your yard and garden as a place for food, so they will hang around all year. Birds in the garden are very beneficial and aren’t just pretty things to look at. They eat a lot of bugs and larvae that would be eating your garden. So attracting birds to your yard year round is a good thing. If you suddenly had to go away, though, they would find food somewhere. They can range far and wide in search of food, they may have to work harder for it, but they will find something to eat. If you know you will be away though, it is better to arrange for a neighbor to refill your feeders for you. If not, then you may have to be patient and lure them back to your yard.
3. Feeding the birds is really good (or bad) for the birds.
In reality, birds do not need for us to feed them. They are perfectly capable of finding food on their own. So is it good to feed the birds? Well, it certainly is for us, since we get to enjoy watching them and listening to them, not to mention all the good they do in our gardens. Feeding them is also good for them, because they get a better variety of food at the bird feeders than they would normally get during the winter, and it’s more accessible to them. It’s not “bad” for the birds because birds eat what they like. If the food you put into the feeders for them gets spoiled or ruined, they will avoid it. If you put food they don’t like, they will avoid it and go somewhere else to eat. That’s a very good reason to use good bird seed mixes in your bird feeders.
4. The bags of mixed seed found at the grocery stores are bad for the birds.
Actually, it’s bad for your pocketbook, not the birds, because the birds will just toss out the seeds they won’t eat. Bags of cheap bird seed, whether it’s from the grocery store or not, usually has so much filler seed in it that the birds won’t touch, or it has red milo, wheat and other things in they don’t eat and it will have none of the good stuff like, millet, black-oil sunflower seeds, broken peanuts, safflower or sunflower hearts. So it’s a waste of money. However, even the grocery stores are beginning to carry higher quality birdseed, with very good combinations of seed, fruit and nuts that appeal to many kinds of birds. Buying bird food at feed/hardware stores or specialty bird shops is usually best, but high quality mixes can be found other places as well.
5. Squirrels and blackbirds won’t eat safflower seed.
Many people who feed birds will use lots of safflower seed in their mix, believing that it deters the squirrels and blackbirds from feeding at their feeders. If that was ever true, it doesn’t seem to be true any longer. Many people report that any bird (including blackbirds) or mammal (including squirrels) that will eat sunflower seed, will also eat safflower seed.
