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Top 10 Trends in Bird Feeding

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The other night I was thinking about how much bird feeding has changed in the past 20 years. Once upon a time it was hard to find a good bird feeder and it was really tough finding a reliable source of good birdseed. And suet was free from the neighborhood butcher. Even if you just think about what's happened in the last five years it's almost unbelievable how much has changed both for us and for the birds. Here are my picks for the top trends in bird feeding.

10. The explosion of bird feeding. When the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service published a report that there are between 50 and 80 million bird watchers in the United States, what they really mean is that there are that many people who enjoy feeding birds. Interest in birds is second only to gardening as a backyard hobby. Drive through any suburban neighborhood and you'll see a feeder off almost every deck. Peek down the aisles of any major retail chain and you'll see shelves of bird feeders, bird houses, and birdseed. Nearly every town with 20,000 inhabitants has a specialty bird store. This is great for those of us who enjoy feeding birds.

9. Better seed. The demands of the seed-buying public have convinced the major birdseed producers to improve their products. While there are still examples of junk-filled seed being sold to the unwary, most packaged seed products contain a reasonable mix of seeds, with a strong emphasis on black-oil sunflower seed. Here's a seed-buying tip: Read the list of ingredients or contents on the package before buying. Manufacturers and packagers are required to list this information, including what percentage is waste material or "other," which can include seed hulls, twigs, and other inedibles.

8. Black-oil sunflower seed is king. It is the hamburger of the bird-feeding world. Most birds love it because under its easy-to-crack outer shell is a large nutmeat that's really worth the effort to obtain. Unlike striped sunflower, which can only be cracked by a grosbeak or woodpecker bill or the hammering of nuthatches and jays, black-oil seed is easily cracked by smaller finches, siskins, towhees, and other small seed eaters. With so many seeds being cracked at a feeder, plenty of seed bits are scattered about for sparrows, juncos, wrens, and the like to scarf up. The new benchmark for how busy your feeder is, is measured in the number of 50-pound bags of black-oil sunflower you haul home per month.

7. Better feeders. Serious bird feeding places incredible demands on a feeder. The cheap plastic tube feeders of yesteryear have been replaced by heavier, durable high-impact plastic tubes. Pine or particleboard feeders, which did not weather gracefully, have been replaced by hardwood or cedar. Some manufacturers have created feeders from recycled plastic, aluminum, and other metals. Quality feeders in a variety of styles are available in all price ranges. Consumers have demanded that their bird feeders be easy to fill, easy to clean, and hold a large volume of seed. In some cases they have also demanded that feeders exclude all but certain birds. Manufacturers have listened, and today there are more good choices than ever.

6. Specialty feeders. While some manufacturers have concentrated on making a better tube feeder, others have explored the niche markets of specialty feeders. Examples of specialty feeders might include woodpecker feeders (offering suet or nuts), oriole feeders (offering fruit or nectar), and bluebird feeders (offering mealworms). Any feeder designed with a particular bird species or family or a particular bird food in mind can be considered a specialty feeder. Ten years ago there were few specialty feeders available commercially; today there are dozens of styles. Both squirrel-proof and squirrel-friendly feeder designs are popular. I have even heard rumors of a self-filling bird feeder. Now that I'd like to see.

5. Feeder hygiene. With the increase in bird feeding has come the natural downside: the spread of disease among birds at feeding stations. As more and more feeder operators observe sick or dead birds at their feeders, the importance of feeder hygiene becomes clear. We, as feeders of birds, have an obligation to these creatures. Regular washing and disinfecting of feeders and feeding areas reduces the chance that disease is being transmitted among birds. The current outbreak of "house finch disease" has demonstrated firsthand that sick birds can show up anywhere at any time.

4. Suet cakes. The popularity of feeding suet spawned a mini-industry all its own: the manufacturing of suet cakes. Suet from the butcher is great, but it comes in huge hunks that are hard to fit into most standard suet feeders. Rendering hunks of suet and remolding them into smaller, easier-to-use pieces can be time consuming (not to mention stinky and messy). Enter the suet cake. It's a preformed small cake, easy to fit into most suet feeders. It comes wrapped in plastic to minimize suet-covered hands. And it can contain extra goodies for the birds (raisins, nuts, seeds, and even dried insects!). The birds seem to enjoy these cakes and so do the convenience-loving feeder operators, who buy them by the million.

3. Peanuts and mealworms. Peanut feeding has been a common practice in European gardens, where the birds are fed at "bird tables," as feeders are called there. North Americans finally got the hang of peanut feeding in the past five years, and now lots of peanuts are being consumed by North American birds. The peanuts being fed are those rejected as not good enough for human consumption by the candy and cocktail nut packagers. Suet feeders work well for feeding peanuts, but the new peanut feeders now available work even better. Mealworms, long the bastion of bass fishermen, rehabilitators, and bluebird/purple martin landlords, are now being fed to all kinds of backyard birds. In response to demand, mealworm producers have sprouted up all over North America, often guaranteeing next-day delivery of 1,000 squirmy bits of protein. Offer them in a small glazed crock with vertical sides (to prevent the worms from escaping).

2. Range changes. The tangible effect of feeding can be seen in the range expansions of several southern bird species into more northern climes. These species include northern cardinal, Carolina wren, and blue jay, to name a few. In winter, many sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks are content to stay farther north, preying upon the plump feeder birds in and around backyards. In the southeastern states, winter records of hummingbirds are being reported from all over, due largely to the presence of hummer feeders. Hummers aren't being prevented from migrating by the presence of the feeders, rather the birds are finding the feeders as they wander and migrate in an easternly, rather than southerly, direction.

1. The house finch. Perhaps no other North American species has so successfully exploited the largesse at bird feeders. The house finch's rapid expansion across the continent from both the East and West was accomplished in fewer than 50 years. In fact, it is thought that the massive amount of inbreeding required to populate the continent, especially among the eastern birds, may be a factor in the house finch's susceptibility to disease. For more about house finch disease, visit the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's website.