Birdfeeder behavior

You can learn a lot about bird behavior by sitting at your kitchen table and watching birds at your birdfeeder though your binoculars. That's part of the fun of birdwatching. Overall, birds bring those same innate behaviors that allow them to survive in the wild to our bird feeders. For instance, if you are careful to note the technique each species of bird uses to collect food at the bird feeder, you will quickly see that quite a variety of feeding behaviors are used by the various species: some species prefer to feed on the ground, some prefer to feed mostly off the elevated feeders, some do a little of each and so on. Then, too, some birds, such as Chickadees dart in, quickly, grab one seed, and then fly off to a nearby tree to eat it; other birds, such as Cardinals, feed at a more leisurely pace. In other words, different species of birds have different “table manners”, so to speak. Watching them is all part of the fun.

Once in awhile, though, you will see some adaptive behavior at the feeder; birds sometimes tweak behavior to get that food from your feeder. A good example of this is the bird in these two pics, namely a Mourning Dove. Now, in the wild, you will go a very long time to catch a Mourning Dove feeding anywhere but on the ground and, that, indeed, is the typical way a Mourning Dove feeds at my bird feeders, as in the pic on the left. Recently, though, a group of Mourning Doves that have been wintering our neighborhood have started to perch right on one of my elevated bird feeders, as in the pic on the right, to access the black oil sunflower, even though there is plenty of seed for them on the ground below the feeder. I suspect this is possible due to the wide tray on this particular feeder, but had I not used this feeder, I might never suspect to see a Mourning Dove on a feeder. Birds are always full of surprises.

Both of these pics were taken by a method called digiscoping. It's a simple and easy way to record pics of birds doing the unexpected.