| Ornitolog30. 12. 2014 11:51:54 |
Hi,
feeding birds, even alpine accentors, is generally not harmful. We just need to make sure not to give them spoiled food.
Birds have a different metabolism than humans, so overcooked food can sometimes harm them more than help. But that birds would die because of it, I don't think is likely. Much more dangerous is that in some years bird diseases spread more strongly, caused by parasites (also bacteria). To at least try to prevent new infections, we do a lot if we scrub the feeder before the start and after the end of the "feeding" season (also in between).
Regarding food choice, in my opinion the best or "universal" are black sunflower seeds (they don't have such hard shells as black-and-white ones, so smaller birds have greater chance to crack the seed). But all other bird food (various other seeds, nuts, fruit, lard cakes, lard) is also good.
I also have a feeder set up. Today I saw for the first time ever under it the dunnock (that's the bird we hear almost everywhere in the dwarf pine belt early in summer), otherwise this year I saw also bullfinch, pine grosbeak, green woodpecker, greenfinch, goldcrest, chaffinch, siskin, great spotted woodpecker, house and tree sparrows, nuthatch, dunnock, blackbird, long-tailed tit, 5 tit species (great, blue, marsh, willow, crested)... Among "uninvited" guests was also hawfinch, who likes to exploit the crowd around the feeder.
As a curiosity, most birds we observe at the feeder don't nest here. Although they are tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, dunnocks, those visiting the feeder came from the north (Baltic states, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia...) or descended from higher altitudes in the Alps.
The same species that nest in Slovenia migrate to the Mediterranean.
More on feeding read here:
http://ptice.si/?s=hranjenje+ptic&lang=sl
p.s. will post some pic soon
| (+3) |  | |
|
|