October 2, 2024

Bird of Passage: October 2024

Do you have bird feeders? I don’t (not seed feeders, at least), and to be honest, I’ve become a bit of a curmudgeon about them.

About half the area of my yard, front and back, is landscaped with native plants. Well, “landscaped” is a generous term for it, as we’re talking about the opposite of formal garden beds here. Mostly we just haphazardly planted a bunch of stuff and then waited to see what would do well and what wouldn’t.

I’m very happy with the results. In June it’s a wonderland out there, with clouds of pink and blue blossoms everywhere. By October, not much is still blooming, but I like this time of year, too. Now everything has gone to seed—and our yard is full of nature’s little bird feeders, attracting a constant stream of finches and chickadees. We used to have an actual seed feeder in our yard, but we don’t anymore. Honestly these days if someone asks me how to help wild birds or how to attract more birds to their yard, a feeder is not what I’d recommend.

For one thing, they’re really hard to keep clean. Did you know you’re supposed to scrub and bleach them every two weeks to prevent the spread of disease? Back when we had a tube feeder for finches, we’d inevitably see sick goldfinches in our yard no matter how hard we tried to keep that thing sanitized. I suspect the actual problem may have been our neighbors’ feeders, which appear to go months at a time without being touched by human hands, but it got to be so depressing that we eventually took our feeder down permanently.

And the downsides of feeders go beyond disease. Congregating at feeders exposes birds to more predation from hawks and cats. Easy access to human-provided food can alter birds’ behavior (there are wild bird populations that have stopped migrating for this reason). Feeders can even add enough excess phosphorus to local ecosystems to affect nutrient cycling.

We do still have a hummingbird feeder outside our kitchen window, which we take apart and run through the dishwasher every week. But mostly, our strategy for making our yard more bird-friendly has been to make our yard look more like natural bird habitat: lots of native plants that we let go to seed instead of neatly pruning them, lots of leaves and twigs lying around that we don’t bother to clear away, and multiple brush piles (plus a ground-level bird bath as a water source).

TLDR: If you like birds, plant some native plants in your yard and then let things get messy. In my curmudgeonly opinion, that’s ultimately going to be better than a pristinely manicured lawn with a seed feeder.

And now, an unrelated request: Will you hit reply to this email and tell me briefly what’s been bringing you joy lately, bird- and nature-related or not? Next month’s newsletter will go out the day after Election Day in the U.S., which will undoubtedly be a stressful time, and I’d like to assemble any replies I get into an email that may give us all at least a bit of a bright spot in our inbox.

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Words About Birds

YOU GUYS I WROTE A FEATURE FOR SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN! In the October issue, you’ll find my piece about what scientists have learned from two decades of studying the hybrid zone where Black-capped and Carolina chickadees overlap and interbreed. Warmer winters have allowed Carolinas to move north into Black-caps’ traditional range, and female Black-caps find male Carolinas sexy. The hybrids that result, however, seem to have cognitive and metabolic problems. It’s a really cool body of research and I hope you’ll read the story!

Hakai Magazine also asked me to do a short write-up of a recent study on seabird bycatch in European waters. At least 200,000 seabirds are killed in this region each year by becoming entangled in commercial fishing gear, with sea ducks and alcids among the most heavily affected families. The worst offenders were gillnetting ( huge net panels suspended in the water) and longlining (dragging lines 40+ km long, with numerous baited hooks, behind ships). The authors of the new review argue that the EU is not doing nearly enough about this issue.

Not by me: I was intrigued by this story in the fall issue of Audubon about the mysterious decline of Common Grackles. It’s been more than a decade now since I lived within the range of these birds, but I definitely always thought of them as, well, common; I had no idea they were in long-term decline. The issue isn't with reproduction—data shows that they fledge plenty of young—so something must be killing off adults. Now scientists are tracking their movements and diets to try to pinpoint the problem.

Finally: Night Parrots!!! A research team in Australia (including indigenous rangers) recently discovered a new breeding population of these birds, the largest one yet found. To be clear, “largest known population” means, in this case, around 50 individuals. These nocturnal parrots were feared to be extinct for around 100 years before a series of new records in the 2010s. I spent three months in the Australian Outback in 2009 and saw a lot of parrots… but definitely not these!

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Book Recommendation of the Month

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick. Today we take the idea of mammoths and dinosaurs for granted, but back in the Victorian era and earlier, when almost everyone assumed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old and extinction was impossible, the discovery of the fossil remains of these ancient beasts turned science on its head. This is a fun, very readable book that explores how that happened, and I’m really enjoying it.

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Upcoming Events + Miscellany

When this goes out, I’ll be at the American Ornithological Society meeting in Colorado, looking for story ideas; please say hi if you’re here too!

Oct. 18: Enlighten Kitsap Community Forum (virtual book talk)

Oct. 23: In Conversation With David Lindo (livestream)

Oct. 24: Eastside Audubon Society (virtual book talk)