BirdGuides

Feed the birds… tuppence a bag! Lovely idea, but there’s always a snag. As we continue to turn the landscape into a manscape, the ‘natural’ habitat for wild birds shrinks alarmingly. Millions of us have decided to offer birds supplementary food. As you might expect, this has both positive and negative results. There has been a lot of debate about the overall impact of supplementary feeding, but the current consensus is that it’s a good thing, both for the bird populations and for the mental health of the humans providing the food and watching the birds in their gardens. There is nothing easier than buying an inexpensive feeder, filling it with food and then enjoying the delightful spectacle as birds come to feed. It’s too easy. We have to think much harder about what we are doing. There’s a hidden disaster going on right under our noses. Imagine if, one week, a quarter of a million greenfinches suddenly fell out of the sky – stone dead. That would be front page news. Yet every year from 2006 to 2016 well over a quarter of a million greenfinches ‘fell out of the sky’, killed by a parasite, Trichomonosis. The overall population crashed by 66%, as a result the greenfinch is now on the UK Red List, facing extinction. The British Trust for Ornithology said this ‘represents the largest scale infectious disease impact on a European wild bird on record’. Terrible. But here’s the worst thing: we – you and I – anyone who feeds garden birds – were responsible. The parasite that causes this fatal disease is passed on in the saliva of infected birds as they gag and drool, struggling to eat at our feeders. If the feeders are not cleaned frequently (at least every two weeks) the entire local population can become infected. So, here’s the issue: many popular feeders are extremely difficult to clean. What was needed was a completely new design. Enter Dick Wood – not a bird expert but a seasoned industrial designer. Dick’s design background enabled him to come up with his ‘cleaner feeder’ system, now incorporated into a range of Finches Friend products. With these feeders it takes literally seconds to remove the feed station (that the birds perch on), a couple of minutes to clean and seconds to refit. If we want to stop the drastic decline of many of our garden birds, we have to take cleaning our feeders much more seriously. Dick’s invention goes a long way to facilitating this, and, if widely adopted, can provide a solution to one of the most serious issues facing our garden birds today. Greenfinch by Carl Bovis Feeding garden birds problems and new solutions TV presenter Martin Hughes-Games describes a bird-feeding innovation 29 Years of Birdwatching & Wildlife Holidays Join us on a 2022 or 2023 Avian Adventure 2022 Availability Portugal - Autumn in Southern Portugal (3 places - Guaranteed Departure) Gambia - West African Paradise (2 places - Guaranteed Departure) Chile - Atacama High Plateau, Central Andes & Patagonia (3 places - Guaranteed Departure) Costa Rica - La Selva, Arenal, Carara & Cana Negro (4 places - Guaranteed Departure) 2023 Tour Programme (January - June) Bulgaria - (Rhodope Mountains & Southern Black Sea) Finland & Norway - (Arctic Summer - Varanger Fjord) Iceland - (Land of Ice & Fire) Spain - (Iberian Lynx) • Spain - (Extremadura) Botswana (Okavango Delta) Bhutan - (Himalayan Kingdom of Druk Yul) New York (Central Park & Jamaica Bay) Panama (Tranquilo Bay Lodge) www.avianadventures.co.uk 01384 372013 | avianadventures@btinternet.com omcg. dbnpaaj ir ldwid r tou e ytim an wor in sr tou d rbs ur i e s 271671610 oc.sruotdribsuras@s uras c.gnidribnapaj.www oc.sruotdribsuras.www sa 71 97 ku. mo ku. :eeuqraMwollawS:riafdriBl abolG