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Feeding birds Save birds by feeding them properly
According to Prof. Dr. med. Martin Kraft from Marburg report many media again and again that the year-round feeding is nonsensical. It is often said that feeding only reaches those species of birds that are very common. The rare and the migratory birds have little chance of breeding. However, this does not correspond to the level of knowledge of experts and science. Investigations that make these claims do not exist.
contents
- Dramatic decline
- Affected are the field birds
- Why are the field birds disappearing??
- Without insects no plants
- No more seeds
- What can you do against bird death??
- The bird-friendly garden
- Berries and nettles
- Foliage and deadwood
- Fundamentals of bird feeding
- Which food is suitable?
- NoGos in bird feeding
- fruit eaters
- forage
- Bird food made by yourself
- The feeding place
- fodder trees
- insect-eater
- cricket
- Steppengrillen
- locusts
- bee larvae
- Wax moth larvae
- fly maggots
- Flour beetle larvae
- Buffalo worms
- insect diet
- Year-round feeding
Dramatic decline
In 2016/2017, NABU's winter census showed a 17% decline in the number of bird feeders. In Germany, nearly half of all breeding birds are on the Red List of Endangered Species. Species of birds that depend on insects, such as the robin, have been steadily decreasing for years. The cause is clear: the amounts of insects have fallen by up to 80% in Germany. Thus, insectivores lack nutrition, and without them, they can not raise their young.
For insectivores like the robin, it becomes increasingly difficult to find enough food. (Image: MiKa / fotolia.com) Affected are the field birds
Most affected are species that live in agricultural landscapes. Their breeding pairs have dropped by 57% in the EU since 1980, ie by 300 million. These include lapwings such as black-tailed godwit and common snipe, skylarks, brown and black throats, gold and gray harrier and Ortolon, meadow pipit, quail and partridge.
Why are the field birds disappearing??
The main reasons for the bird dying are the loss of habitat such as meadows, wet meadows, field margins and insect killing, both of which go hand in hand. More and more effective pesticides are "doing their job," killing insects; Corn and rape cultivation drive off birds that rely on open landscapes.
Without insects no plants
Insect killing does not only feed the insectivores; Countless plants depend on bees, bumblebees, hoverflies and butterflies as pollinators. If they fail, the seed-bearing wild plants from which the grain eaters live also disappear. However, there are hardly any long-term studies to which universities are still lacking funds.
No more seeds
The ornithologist Peter Berthold represents the year-round feeding. He says: "In the fifties, birds on every wheat field in Germany found over one million tons of seeds from field herbs. From a wheat field - and on potato fields and other fields that was the same. That was an enormous amount of food. Today, apart from wheat, corn or potatoes, nothing grows in the fields anymore. "
What can you do against bird death??
The main causes of bird dying are habitat destruction and lack of food, so raising food and creating habitats are crucial to curb bird dying. As a private person you can contribute to that. Private gardens play a key role, provided they are bird-friendly, and you feed the birds well with edible plants and the right feed.
In order to preserve the natural habitat of birds, wild herbs should have a permanent place in their home garden. (Image: Christine Kuchem / fotolia.com) The bird-friendly garden
Avoid poison and leave wild herbs in corners of the garden. A pesticide-killed English lawn and a garden where every month that disappears into the bio-bin, of which wild animals could live just that long, does not provide a habitat for birds. The bird feeders and nesting boxes installed in such ecological deserts are, like a Domesto-cleaned shower, an adequate biotope for fire salamanders.
Berries and nettles
They can provide many birds with food, hiding places and nesting sites at the same time by providing native plants: thrushes love the berries of elderberry, hawthorn, rowan and blackthorn; Greenfinches, sparrows and bullfinches like cereals, grasses, stinging nettles, thistles, docks or dandelions, as well as sunflowers, pumpkins, beechnuts, walnuts or hazelnuts. Tits eat berries and grains.
Firethorn nourishes birds like bees, as well as the hedge and bird cherry; Holly offers food and nesting sites, as well as hornbeam and apple trees. Excellent fruit for birds is the dogwood. Plants that carry seeds and fruits that attract birds include: columbine, broom heath, mullein, soapwort, rowan, privet, snowball, daphne or turnip.
Foliage and deadwood
Do not keep your garden clinically clean, do not use a vacuum cleaner. Create a deadwood hedge; insects survive the winter in a bunch of twigs, the snail-bark and the wren find their place here; pile the autumn leaves on a pile of leaves and leave some fallen fruit.
Feeding silos are very suitable for bird feeding, as the food does not spoil in this. (Image: Heiner Witthake / fotolia.com) Fundamentals of bird feeding
1) Keep the feeding area clean and dry. As little feces as possible should get into the feed. Particularly suitable are feed columns and feed silos. Do you build your feed house yourself? Then make sure that the food neither eats nor ices in heavy rain, snow or wind. Otherwise it rots quickly.
2) Clean the feeding area regularly and do not use corrosive agents. You can brush off the bird feeder and wash it with hot water. Remove dead birds; Wear rubber gloves and place the carcass in a lockable plastic bag. Dead birds may indicate salmonellosis or trichomonads.
3) If you have a legitimate suspicion of any of these diseases, stop feeding and disinfect the house with a vinegar solution. Clean the feed house, soil and surrounding area from all food leftovers.
4) Prevent the spread of disease by providing food at several small feeding sites rather than a large one. This also has the advantage that dominant species and animals do not drive the weaker from the feeding area.
However, you should not overestimate the risk of disease for the birds. Berthold says, "That's because the birds have such a high body temperature. Up to 45 degrees Celsius. Such temperatures do not survive bacteria! And they have a very good immune system. Many birds live in close proximity to humans. In the past, a village was a stinking affair, there was no sewerage system, manure ran from the dung heaps across the streets. Blackbirds, titmice or robins all hopped about in this muck - they have been used to this kind of environment for centuries. "
5) Firstly, pigeons, crows and magpies eat a lot and secondly they displace small songbirds from the feeding site. To prevent this, secure certain feeding sites with wire mesh or set up bird feeders whose openings are too small for corvids and pigeons.
6) Raise the bird feeder raised on an open area. This allows the birds to recognize creeping cats or martens at an early stage. At the same time bushes or trees should be at a distance of about three meters, in which the songbirds can escape, if a sparrowhawk attacks.
7) Some birds are looking for their food on the ground. Make special feeders for them. Clean the feeding area on the ground and change the location regularly.
Grease-grain blends are commercially available e.g. available as ready made dumplings. The dumplings can also be easily produced by yourself. (Image: patila / fotolia.com) Which food is suitable?
Berthold says: "One should take a compound feed with many seeds and with as few grains of wheat as possible. (...) Then you should give a little soft fat, so soft cereal flakes, which were enriched with oil. And the most important: fat. The ultimate is the Meisenknödel! "
Roughly we differentiate between two types of birds when feeding: grain and soft food eaters. Many species absorb both plants and insects, some prefer hard seeds, others soft fruits.
Soft-food eaters are, for example, robins, wren, singing and juniper chokes. They are suitable for all kinds of berries. If you have not collected any berries, raisins are a good substitute in winter. In addition, there are generally all types of fruit such as apples, pears or peaches and oatmeal and bran. Above all, these species eat ground.
Tip: Especially for juniper chokes, you can also simply collect down fallen apples in a box and put them to the animals for "feeding". Valuable nutrients also offer soft-boiled potatoes, small-cut beets and acorns.
The most important food for most species on the feed house are sunflower seeds. Titmice prefer a mixture of fat and seeds. These can be bought as sticks or dumplings, but can also be produced in quantities. They should offer water not only in summer, but also in winter, in bird baths and water bowls, because the grain food is dry.
NoGos in bird feeding
1) Do not feed any kitchen leftovers. Harmful are all saline foods: bread with salt, chips, pretzels, ham, bacon, sausage and cheese.
2) Do not feed anything frozen and make sure the food does not freeze.
3) Bread is unsuitable as birdseed. It quickly becomes bad and swells in the stomach of the birds.
Bread should not be used for feeding as it swells in the stomach of the birds. (Image: lanastev8 / fotolia.com) fruit eaters
Starlings, thrushes, waxwings and a number of other species love fruit. Elderberries and the fruits of mountain ash, bird, sour and sweet cherry are just as suitable as bromides, raspberries or blueberries.
forage
Mixed eaters and vegetarians love chickweed, dandelion, shepherd's purse or plantain.
Bird food made by yourself
To make birdseed yourself, they heat 300 grams of coconut fat in a pot, but do not cook it. They put in two tablespoons of cooking oil and 300 grams of mixed grains such as sunflower seeds and hemp seed, Niger or poppy seed, and chopped nuts. The lovely mountain, green as chaffinches, Siskin, grosbeak and bullfinch, house and field sparrow. Woodpeckers and nuthatches take the mixture as well, but in addition they need fatty food and mealworms, wax moth larvae etc.
For herbivores, mix oatmeal, wheat bran and raisins instead of sunflower seeds. Cabbage, marsh, tail and coal tit like peanut break, sunflower seeds and fat feed.
You can fill this mixture in a liquid state in flower pots, bowls or halved coconuts.
The feeding place
The many species of birds look for their food in different places, tree runners on trunks and branches, thrushes and browns on the ground, tits fly through the bushes, ravens and sparrows find their food everywhere.
For titmice, therefore, are suitable for dumplings, which are hung on tapes, for nuthatches, woodpeckers and tree runners, however, you offer food on bark or wood; Thrushes, robins, hedgerows and mountain finches feed you on the ground. Starlings, chaffinches and sparrows are not interested in where to place the food.
Against year-round feeding, critics object that the birds would unlearn looking for their natural food. Berthold says no. He says: "For the birds, our food is only a moderate kitchen, so to speak, good bourgeois. If something else offers them, they attack. Or so, the birds use the dumplings for the energy they need to catch insects for their young. "Meanwhile, you can also feed insectivores.
fodder trees
In your own garden, you can paint fat in the bark of larger trees, but only in small quantities, otherwise it spoils quickly. You can also drill holes in a rotten branch and paint in the mixture. Nuthatches and tree runners will thank them.
For feeding insectivores, e.g. the swift, offer themselves, among other things crickets. (Image: Nailia Schwarz / fotolia.com) insect-eater
Insectivores include, for example, tree runners, hedgerow shrubs, summer and winter gold chickens, warblers, swallows, wagtails or wrens, wall and alpine swifts. These animals contain soft food, insect dry food, insects such as insect larvae. In the animal feed trade, it is now possible to buy various food animals that are suitable for insectivores.
cricket
Crannies are small, medium and large, the middle ones are up to 2.5 centimeters long. Terrarium owners are the main takers. You get crickets in the pet shop, but you better order for the bird feeding on a specialty trade, as these crickets are considerably cheaper. They take the crickets alive and then freeze them in the box. Meanwhile, you can also buy crickets that are cooked and frozen and thawed longer than freshly frozen ones.
Steppengrillen
These animals are a bit bigger than crickets, but can be stored as well.
locusts
Migratory locusts are popular as feeding animals with reptile keepers because they are easy to breed and are inexpensive in trade. They contain valuable proteins, vitamins and minerals. Migratory locusts freeze them as well as the crickets and hand them wild birds thawed.
bee larvae
Bee larvae are a valuable year-round food and protein bombs for insectivores. You can ask beekeepers about drone brood and place the honeycombs with the larvae in the freezer. To feed the larvae, remove them from the frozen honeycomb - do not let the honeycomb thaw.
Then boil the drones in water and scare them off with cold water. You dry them off, for example with kitchen paper and freeze them again.
Wax moth larvae
Wax moths lay their eggs in bee nests, where the larvae of pollen remains and old cocoons develop. You can get cheap all year round in the retail trade for terrariums and in Anglergeschäften.
Fly maggots provide plenty of protein - but should only be fed frozen. (Image: SyB / fotolia.com) fly maggots
Live fly maggots provide an abundant source of protein.
Flour beetle larvae
Flour beetle larvae, the so-called mealworms, are suitable as supplementary feed for many bird species, preferably freshly skinned.
Buffalo worms
These "worms" are the larvae of the corn beetle. Their Chitinpanzer is softer than with mealworms, so birds can digest the animals better. They can already be bought frozen and can then be thawed.
insect diet
Insect food in the zoo animal trade consists of dried insects and shrimp. It is less suitable for the breeding season of the birds and should at least not be the only food for insectivores. You can fortify the insect food with Korvimin ZVT or Vitakalk, as well as with a vitamin B complex.
Year-round feeding
Berthold explains why it makes sense to feed all year round: "In the summer half of the year, energy demand is highest. The days are then the longest, the birds most active, as they raise young. But they fly up to 300 times a day. That costs energy, and that has to come from somewhere. "(Dr. Utz Anhalt)
swell
http://darmstadt.bund.net/service_und_beratung/nistmoeglichkeiten_bauen_voegel_fuettern_im_winter/voegel_fuettern_im_winter/
http://www.futtertiere-futterinsekten.de/wachsmaden-wachsmottenlarven.html
http://www.ornithologie.net
http://www.wildvogelhilfe.org