Seems more likely that a number of your birds have either A) migrated elsewhere (your email left off where you live - and remember that some "migrations" may be just altitudinal, even within the city); B) died (the first year is a poor survival year for most small avians); or C) found other food sources (maybe someone else in your neighborhood is putting out only hulled sunflower seeds and a bowl of meal worms or something, drawing all of your feathered friends away) . It also seems likely that during the summer, the adult birds were using your feeders for easy pickings to deal with hungry babies. Breeding season can be a very trying time, and birds will take advantage of friendly feeders.

If I recall correctly, there was a study done a few years back by either Cornell or by Audubon that showed that even with feeders ready at hand, birds still only use them as a diet supplement, getting some 70% of their caloric intake from other sources. Which says a lot about the caloric intake of birds when one watches them drain a feeder in anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days.

Either way, this is an interesting question to ponder, and is probably the result of multiple things. Cheers!

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com

William Andersen <ander at u.washington.edu> wrote:
Hi:

As a new backyard feeder, I have not yet experienced a full annual cycle,
but I do notice that in November my chickadees, finches, jays, etc. are much
less numerous and are consuming about 10% of what they consumed in August.
There has been no change in habitat, feeders, feeder location or feed
(mostly black sunflower seed). Somewhere I picked up the notion that birds'
normal sources of food may be scarce in the winter which would seem to
suggest there would be more consumption in winter months. Is what I'm
seeing a normal winter pattern? Weather related? Something I said?



Bill Andersen

ander at u.washington.edu

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