Leaving my garden feeders for 3 months (1 Viewer)

[jackrmee]

Hello,
I have read that it’s very important to be consistent with feeding, as especially in winter, when food is scarce, birds can waste essential feeding time waiting at a bird table that they have grown accustomed to, as they think food will arrive.

I love feeding my garden birds and do so, but I travel to Portugal from U.K. to stay there for half the year.
This happens twice, for 3 month periods.

I am in U.K. in March/April/May.
Portugal June/July/August.
U.K. September/October/November.
Portugal December/January/February.

I feed the birds in both places during those months.
Am I doing more harm than good?
I really love to do it, but is it for my benefit more than the birds?

What is the best way for me to do this?

 

[Julie50]

Hi

What are you feeding?

 

[Kits]

Carry on as you are. I don’t think you are doing any harm.

 

[jackrmee]

Hi

What are you feeding?

A bit of everything really.

In U.K.
I have 2 hanging plastic feeder things with general bird seed I get from the store.
1 similar which I put rolled oats, pumpkin seeds and sunflower hearts.
1 suet log thing.
1 home made lard and seed hanger.
1 half coconut store bought hanger.
Plus most of my food scraps go on my shed roof.
Also 2 Pyrex dish lids for water and bathing.

Portugal is a little more difficult due to having less scraps available and being in a much more rural area.
There I have:
1 peanut feeder.
Scraps and whole meal bread, cereals etc on my caravan roof.
Plus glass Pyrex lid for water and bathing.

 

[Tired]

You aren't hurting the birds. Wild food sources are unpredictable. If a food source isn't currently providing anything, the birds know to go elsewhere. Human feeding of wild animals should never get to a point where it's artificially supporting them, anyway.

Bird feeding is mainly for your benefit, but, done properly, it doesn't harm the birds. The best way to help the birds is to plant native plants that provide for them with no human intervention; plants that provide seeds they can eat or attract insects, plants they can hide in, and so on.

You should probably stop feeding food scraps, except for things like vegetables, and you should definitely stop feeding breads and cereals. Breads and other baked goods, while fine for us, don't have much nutrition in them for most birds. It's not good for the birds to eat things they can't digest very well, as it fills them up and prevents them from going and getting nutritious foods elsewhere that day. If it can't be found growing in a garden, field, or forest somewhere, it shouldn't be fed to birds.
(Except suet. Fat is very nutritious.)

 

[jackrmee]

You aren't hurting the birds. Wild food sources are unpredictable. If a food source isn't currently providing anything, the birds know to go elsewhere. Human feeding of wild animals should never get to a point where it's artificially supporting them, anyway.

Bird feeding is mainly for your benefit, but, done properly, it doesn't harm the birds. The best way to help the birds is to plant native plants that provide for them with no human intervention; plants that provide seeds they can eat or attract insects, plants they can hide in, and so on.

You should probably stop feeding food scraps, except for things like vegetables, and you should definitely stop feeding breads and cereals. Breads and other baked goods, while fine for us, don't have much nutrition in them for most birds. It's not good for the birds to eat things they can't digest very well, as it fills them up and prevents them from going and getting nutritious foods elsewhere that day. If it can't be found growing in a garden, field, or forest somewhere, it shouldn't be fed to birds.
(Except suet. Fat is very nutritious.)

Great. Thanks. Im not sure where I heard it. I read it somewhere I think.

Yeah I agree.
I’m planning on moving to Portugal full time, so I am building up the bird friendly landscape over there, including a large pond.

Yeah I agree about the bread. I very rarely give them whole meal, but not much.
I do let them have fatty foods sometimes too, but not too often.
I don’t eat meat, so most of my leftovers are plant based anyway.

 

[Tired]

Maybe somebody saw that birds may hang around an empty feeder if they know it'll be filled at a certain time of day, and extrapolated it from there?

Most fruits and vegetables are probably fine, though onions are toxic to just about every non-human vertebrate I can think of. Humans actually eat a lot of foods that are toxic to other animals; we're resistant to a lot of that.