Should you feed birds in your backyard?

Australian Community Media

Feeding native birds is a contested topic in Australia. An urban ecologist provides his advice for feeding birds safely and WIRES implores people to never feed wildlife.

Transcript

00:00between a third and a half of Australians anywhere in Australia are at any one time feeding birds.

00:07Should you feed birds in your backyard? It's a controversial topic in Australia,

00:13and most wildlife organisations or government agencies will advise you to never feed birds.

00:20Although it can be tempting to feed wildlife, particularly birds, it's usually best to avoid

00:26this practice. Some foods such as bread and mince can cause health impacts for birds and nutritional

00:33deficiencies. When it comes to magpies, the most commonly fed bird in Australia, they don't eat

00:42seed, they eat worms and grubs, invertebrates primarily. Aussies often feed minced meat to magpies,

00:51which can be harmful. We really have to stop feeding any birds mince. It just doesn't have

00:57enough calcium. No bird just eats meat. No predator or carnivore just eats meat. They eat all the parts

01:05of the animal's body. And so until they come up with an artificial worm or invertebrate of some sort,

01:12the best thing to do is provide them with pet food. So just dry dog food or cat food is okay,

01:18and it won't do them any harm. It's really crucially important if we're going to feed birds to be very

01:25clean. It's like if you were inviting your friends over for dinner, you'd make sure the plates were

01:30clean before you actually provided the dinner. We sweep down any of the debris that was on there from

01:35the last time that we put some food out. I always wipe it down with some vinegar just to kill anything

01:41that might be there. That's because bird feeders can spread diseases like beak and feather disease,

01:48which has high death rates and no effective treatment. It's quite prevalent in rainbow

01:54lorikeets and cockatoos, and it's highly contagious and can be spread on surfaces.

02:01That's just one of the reasons WISE implores Australians to never feed birds. Although I know we

02:07all want to help our birds and wildlife, it does do generally more harm than good. If we do want to

02:14help, we can look into planting some native shrubs in our garden.

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