What Type of Food We can give To Birds

[Mackcarol 0]

There are many kinds of feeds available to attract birds. You can buy mixes or single types of feeds at supermarkets, livestock feed stores, garden supply stores, or through catalogs. The particular type of mix you put out influences the number and variety of birds that will use feeding places. Until recently, there has been little scientific information to guide the selection of bird feeds. Now we know much better what feeds attract or fail to attract different kinds of birds to feeders.

This information on relative attractiveness of bird feeds is based on 710,450 observations of birds choosing between two or more feeds at experimental feeders in Maryland, California, Ohio, and Maine. In these studies, black-striped sunflower and white prove millet (s and p following the bird names in Table 1) were used as standards. All other feeds were presented at experimental feeding tables along with one or both of these standards to measure relative attractiveness. The work was done under the direction of the Urban Wildlife Research Program of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. However, the bulk of observations were made by volunteers.