Subject: Peanut Butter Sticks in Bird Mouths -> Urban Legend?
Date: Nov 18 13:49:13 1999
From: Tom Benedict - benedict.t at ghc.org
Well that sounds pretty definitive to me!
My only experience with peanut butter as bird food was over thirty years ago at a Junior Audubon group. The leaders, well seasoned birdwatchers, had peanut butter embedded in tree trunks. Seems like it's fallen out of favor.
Thanks,
Tom
>>> Jamie M Acker <biowler1 at juno.com> - 11/18/99 1:14 PM >>>
My Bible for general bird feeder info, "Hand Taming Wild birds At The
Feeder" by Alfred G. Martin, states that peanut butter is bad stuff for
birds, chickadees in particular. The book, as well as the author, are
ancient, but in it he relates an experience he had in 1944 in which he
found an egg-bound chickadee. The source of the egg-binding was peanut
butter. Martin explains that while peanut butter may be beneficial to us,
"when a seed-eating bird feeds entirely on peanut butter, he loses the
gravel from his gizzard, and it does not function normally; it shrinks
and his liver becomes enlarged, and the bird is soon very ill or dead."
He goes on, "Some chickadees will die soon after eating their first meal
of peanut butter. When they have eaten all they can hold, they cram their
little mouths full of it and carry it away. When they try to deposit
the butter in a hiding place, it sticks to the roof of their mouths; in
the struggle to dislodge it, the butter is packed tighter and the birds
choke to death." This may be unsubstantiated hogwash, but I believe the
following:
"If a female chickadee eats a lot of peanut butter up to the time she is
ready to lay her first egg, she is very apt to die of egg-binding. Some
of my naturalist friends disagree with me on this, but I have had several
chickadees left at my taxidermy studio that had died this way, ad every
one of them had been eating peanut butter."
Martin also sttes that some birds seem to know their limits and will eat
only a little peanut butter, while others will feed entirely on it, given
the opportunity.
I myself don't provide peanut butter at my feeder.
Jamie Acker
Bainbridge Island
BIowler1 at juno.com
___________________________________________________________________
Get the Internet just the way you want it.
Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month!
Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.