Urban Bird Feeders Are Changing the Course of Evolution

February 2, 2018 8:04 AM

Traditional wisdom dictates that birds don’t become dependent on a free lunch, but more than 50 million Americans are conducting an unwitting experiment on a vast scale. Author Emily Voigt joins them from her Manhattan high-rise and finds that there is such a thing as a finch Brooklyn accent. (SL Atlantic; delightful read even if you aren't a birder.)
posted by RedOrGreen (10 comments total)

I lived on the Shenandoah River for ten years. Every summer I would check off sightings of great blue herons, little green herons, tricolored herons, even an American ibis, once. But I never seemed to see a black-crowned night heron.

On a day trip to New York, finding the Guggenheim closed (Thursdays?!), we took a stroll around the Central Park reservoir, and I saw three.
posted by steef at 8:47 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

That was a fun story, thanks for posting it.
posted by Diablevert at 9:30 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

My son goes to a school that has named the different small buildings in it's elementary school after various birds. These include the Noio (or black noddy), Manu-o-ku (or white ferry tern, offical bird of the city of Honolulu), 'Elepaio, ʻAlalā (Hawaiian crow, considered extinct), Palila, Pueo, ʻIʻiwi (the beautiful scarlet honeycreeper, whose red feathers were plucked for the feather capes of the Hawaiian cheifs), and ʻApapane.

Mention this because birds are a thing at this school, and as a result, all the kids are ace bird spotters. They're particularly attuned to invasive species like the cattle egret, which is absolutely everywhere. Like the author's husband, I also learned about birds by osmosis.

It's with that context that I share that we were riding our bikes around a park with a man-made (or man-managed stream?), and the kid lept off his bike and demanded my phone set to camera mode so he could stalk a pair of black crowned night herons (or 'Auku'u, around these parts - which happened to be the exact bird he was researching for a project) perched on either side of a pedestrian bridge. Turns out there was no reason to be so excited as a bunch of those birds hang out at that spot all the time. If you need to see one, and happen to be in Honolulu, head over to where the stream meets the small pond in Ala Moana beach park across from the Neiman Marcus and you'll likely run right into them. I've never not seen at least one of them when we've been over there, standing still as a statue waiting for a fish to go by.
posted by NoRelationToLea at 9:51 AM on February 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm flying here.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 9:52 AM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

We had a female bluebird in a nesting box in the backyard that would peck on the back door window when the feeder was empty. I can't say for sure that she was summoning us to fill the feeder, but I can say for sure she never pecked on the window when the feeder was full.
posted by COD at 10:06 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

An interesting read, thanks for posting this.

I was surprised to learn that house finches were only introduced to the US east coast within the last 50 years. I have scads of them coming to my backyard feeders here in SE Alabama. Along with lots of chickadees and some cardinals and mourning doves, house finches make up the majority of the "regulars" that visit.

Also surprised to learn from the article that their beaks are evolving to eat sunflower seeds -- I have two feeders filled with mixed seed and one that is strictly sunflowers and they seem to overwhelmingly prefer the sunflower seed. They hardly pay attention to the mixed seed feeders until all of the sunflower seeds are gone.
posted by TwoToneRow at 10:16 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

We're in a big city, but were lucky enough to find a small house that backs onto a big, treed park and is close to Lake Ontario. We've almost always had a feeder out and it's nice to be able to look out and see birds. We get many migrating birds dropping in in the spring and fall. We've successfully defended against squirrels, try to shoo away the occasional cat, and just look on in awe when a hawk or falcon comes to visit.

It's kind of sad to think that the long-term survival of many species may depend on whether they're aesthetically appealing to us, can tolerate or adapt to our presence, and aren't seen by us as pests or nuisances.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:16 AM on February 3, 2018

For several years I had a pair of house finches nest in a geranium pot I’d hung on my front porch, in the Hudson Valley region of New York. They came back every year and raised one or two broods. I’d occasionally peek at the babies, and marveled at how much they looked like dinosaurs. When I moved away, I was more sad about leaving them than I was about leaving the marriage that’d brought me there.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 9:57 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

We used to put a feeder on our fire escape in Hell's Kitchen to give our cat something to watch, and got your expected pigeons and sparrows, some finches, some cardinals, and doves--which for some reason drove our cat nuts in a way the other birds didn't. We saw a parakeet once! But only once. I always wondered what happened to it...probably nothing good.
posted by emjaybee at 2:11 PM on February 3, 2018

Traditional wisdom dictates that birds don’t become dependent on a free lunch.

I've always heard that one either needs to stop feeding birds before whenever they might migrate or otherwise change their winter patters, or commit to continuing to feed them all winter.

That there are studies showing otherwise doesn't make it "traditional wisdom" that birds don't become dependent -- quite the contrary.
posted by yohko at 4:03 PM on February 3, 2018