There are many things that people don’t know about birds. More than this, circumstances often conspire to result in not simply ignorance of bird-related topics, but in the spread of myths and misconceptions.
Start with birds and seasons, the topic of misconception No. 1: Birds are most abundant in spring. While there are many species that migrate north to California in the spring, there are substantially more that migrate south (or, less frequently, out from the cold interior or down from higher elevations) to our moderate coastal climate. Marin’s winters are nice! And so as we move into fall, we will see increasing numbers of shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors and numerous songbird species.
Misconception No. 2 is also related to the seasons: Bird feeders will prevent birds from migrating on time. For most birds, the primary trigger of migration is day length. Abundance of food is not a deterrent to migration — birds want to be well-nourished when they take off on their long journeys, not pushed to the edge of starvation by an inability to find food. On related topics of migration and feeding, we can quickly dispose of a number of other myths:
Misconception No. 3: Hummingbirds leave in winter. Not in Marin! We have a large population of Anna’s hummingbirds all year round.
Misconception No. 4: Bird feeders cause songbirds to become dependent. They don’t! Birds are always searching for wild food sources in addition to visiting feeders and will not suffer if a feeder is taken down or not refilled for a while. Many natural food sources are similarly abundant for a while — until they aren’t. Birds have to be ready to transition as a given plant stops flowering or fruiting, for instance.
Misconception No. 5: You need to boil water to make hummingbird food. Unboiled tap water is perfectly safe for hummingbirds, although warm water will make it easier to dissolve the sugar.
The standard recipe for hummingbird nectar is four parts water to one part white table sugar, a ratio which imitates that found in natural flower nectar. It is true that you should avoid alternative sweeteners and even organic sugar with a brown tint, which indicates a higher iron concentration that hummingbirds cannot process effectively.
Misconception No. 6: Bird feeders create rodent problems. Hanging a bird feeder will not spontaneously generate a rodent population for your yard, although it could make your existing rodent population more visible. To actually reduce the number of rodents in your yard, you need to reduce rodent habitat by doing things like closing off entrances to attics and crawlspaces, removing brush piles, and clearing dense patches of ivy and other groundcovers.
That being said, there are also plenty of ways of attracting birds without offering additional food to rodents. This includes offering foods they don’t like (like hot pepper-treated seeds and suet), using weight-sensitive feeders they can’t access, or setting up a rat- and squirrel-proof feeding station on a pole or other safe location.
So much for feeding. How about nesting? Perhaps one of the most common old wives’ tales can serve as myth No. 7: If you touch a baby bird or nest, then the parent birds will smell your human scent and abandon the nest or baby. This is not true (not that I recommend handling baby birds unless truly necessary).
For many, the whole enterprise of avian baby-raising is mysterious, perhaps leading to the common misconception No. 8: Birds live in bird houses. In many circles, the term “nesting box” is preferred to “bird house” in order to avoid this confusion. Human-made boxes are for nesting, the temporary activity of spring in which a nest is built, eggs are laid, and the young are raised until they can fly. It is true, however, that birds may sometimes roost or sleep inside a bird house outside of the nesting season, but this is by no means a uniform or standard practice.
These are all common ideas floating around in the general pool of human error about birds, but I hope I’ve managed to clear up some confusion.
Have you encountered any bird beliefs of dubious accuracy in conversation with others or in your own mind? Feel free to share them with me for inclusion in a future column. There is always more to learn about birds.
Jack Gedney’s On the Wing runs every other Monday. He is a co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato and author of “The Private Lives of Public Birds.” You can reach him at [email protected].
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