Animal

Country diary: the gatherings at the bird feeder are anything but random


The bird feeder hangs from a branch a few metres from the hide. It has been placed there and filled with seed by the National Trust in woodland next to an old quarry above the road along Wenlock Edge. There’s a path from the car park that passes the hide and it’s a favourite place for children and families out for a walk. Many of those who visit it may not be familiar with the woodland birds that feed here and rarely get the opportunity to get so close to them.

Sitting quietly in a shed open to the woods, looking at the feeder and the birds coming and going, seemingly oblivious to being watched as they flit and thrum about their daily lives, is like entering another world through a screen. But what do birds get out of it? The bird feeder is a metre-long Perspex tube filled with a variety of seeds. It has entry holes with little plastic perches so that several individuals can pick seeds from the feeder at any one time. Together, nuthatch, chaffinch, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, are bright, colourful birds that look so neat and healthy, even after their battering from storms. Each bird takes a turn, doesn’t stay long and returns regularly; there are few skirmishes and this seems the result of a carefully constructed code of behaviour.

The feeding birds all know each other, and the combinations of individuals are anything but random. While they are being watched, they are watching each other. Dominance, hierarchy, dependence and relationships between individual birds circle around the feeder, which is the axis of their world. What looks like a delightful performance from inside the hide is the outer appearance of a complex social organisation in the wood. It is known from urban bird feeder studies that species’ richness and abundance is influenced by the neighbourhoods that feed birds; in a woodland, a feeder may be more a kind of benign trap.

The foraging traditions and attachment to place of wild populations is learned from the personalities of individuals who influence strategy and social organisation in these songbirds. They are all beautiful and complex, nervous and obsessive, a society devoted to the mysterious providence of the watchers.



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