Thursday, 4 January 2024
For more information, read our guide to feeding wild birds in Australia.
In the Emu in 1910, Mackay resident Edward Cornwall delightedly described a neighbour “engaged in her daily pleasurable task of feeding a number of Blue-bellied Lorikeets” (as Rainbow Lorikeets were then called).
“When the lady calls,” he enthused, “they come by the dozen for the food she offers them, and settle all over her shoulders, head, hands.”
A photograph shows the joyful mayhem. Cornwall, a prominent member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union (RAOU), delighted not only in the colourful spectacle but also in the fact that the lorikeets his neighbour loved had “learned to trust her implicitly.” As birders of his generation knew, building affectionate and trusting relationships with birds was the point of feeding them.
Later generations of birders knew that too. The April 1947 issue of Wild Life magazine carried a charming photograph of a little girl, arm outstretched to four Apostlebirds feeding from her hand, captioned ‘Friendship’. An earlier article in the same magazine – ‘In Favour of a Bird Table’ – advocates for “friendship with birds” through feeding them, and author Robinson explains that when “feeding birds … I feel like an honoured guest, privileged above my fellows because the bird will come to my table and eat in my presence without fear. That, then, to me is the virtue of a bird table. Its effect is not to train the birds, but to train human beings.”
The Gould Leagues declared that “a bird feeding table is an essential part of every bird lover’s garden,” and encouraged bird feeding as part of their efforts to foster a conservationist consciousness in children. Their publications gave recipes for bird puddings and other avian treats, along with instructions on how to construct feeding platforms and nectar dispensers, illustrated with photographs of smiling children feeding birds.
The desire to connect to the birds around us through feeding has long been shared by many bird lovers, and we are right to question the impact this will have.
The elderly were as keen as the children. In the 1920s, the last decade of his life, lawyer and amateur ornithologist Harry Wolstenholme did most of his birdwatching in his back garden in the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga. To foster friendship with the birds, he fed them; and even encouraged them to perch on his fingers as they did so. Quite a few obliged. A 1929 Emu article by Wolstenholme carried a photograph of a Grey Shrike-thrush eating from his hand. He even fed a Lewin’s Honeyeater by holding sugared water in his cupped palm while the bird perched on his fingers to lap up the sweet liquid. This was hands-on birding.
There is “a pleasant little thrill [in] having these little wild things eating trustfully from one’s hand,” Tasmanian naturalist John Rowland Skemp wrote in 1949. While he clearly enjoyed feeding birds, Skemp also used the food-forged friendships to closely observe their behaviour and appearance. He charted the annual plumage changes in male Superb Fairy-wrens in meticulous detail; likewise the deposition of pigmentation on the barbules of the feathers. It was the kind of detail ornithologists of the time usually derived from dead specimens, but Skemp made his observations on living birds that had perched trustingly on his fingers to feed.
This story ran in the summer 2023 issue of Australian Birdlife magazine. To receive our magazine, become a member today.
Through most of the twentieth century, bird feeding got the tick of approval from Australian birdwatchers and ornithologists. Ted Schurmann’s 1977 primer on Bird-watching in Australia advised that “if you want to be on really close terms with your birds, try feeding them.”
Around the same time, the Bird Observers’ Club Promotions Officer, Ellen McCulloch, stated that “feeding birds can be just about the most powerful public relations exercise you can make” since it encouraged people to connect emotionally with the birds around them.
Providing the right kind of food, making sure to keep the area clean and exploring ways to attract birds through growing the right plants are all important things to remember.
Somehow, this rich history of bird feeding in Australia has been forgotten, or at least pushed to the margins. Six or seven years ago, when urban ecologist Darryl Jones began questioning the dominant narrative on bird feeding in Australia, he wrote as if it had always been roundly discouraged. But before the late 1970s, feeding birds was uncontentious in Australia. Birders saw it as a wonderful way to interact with birds, and it was actively promoted by such distinguished birders as Graham Pizzey and Tess Kloot.
The 1980s was a crucial decade for the shift in Australian attitudes, with an ambivalence towards the practice creeping in, and though it’s impossible to pin-point exactly when the anti-feeding message became dominant in Australia, it happened differently for different groups, with some parties taking an anti-feeding stance sooner and stronger than others. Among the groups with a special interest in the matter, birdwatchers maintained a measure of openness to feeding. A glance through past issues of this magazine – especially in its earlier incarnation as Wingspan – will testify to that.
Today, we’ve reached a point whereby a Sydney Wildlife Rescue website asserts that it is “cruel to feed our native birds.” The New South Wales government even hosts a website advising how readers can on stop their neighbours feeding birds, claiming that “most people feed birds out of a misguided desire to care for them” but its real consequences are “health problems or even death for the birds.” How we’ve got to this point, uniquely in Australia, is a puzzle I’ve yet to unravel.
Yet while we’ll be more careful about what we offer to nourish the birds, we should bear in mind that, as for the bird lovers before us, feeding the birds is more to nourish our souls.
But the reasons Australians fed birds in the first place is clear.
Earlier generations of Australians fed birds for much the same reasons that Jones has identified: for pleasure and companionship, to help birds through hard times and to find out more about them. Even the motive Jones called “atonement” – trying to offset the damage we humans have inflicted on the birds and their habitats – was often voiced by Australian bird feeders in the past. But the most prominent motive was to connect with nature.
As in birdwatching generally, connecting with nature isn’t the only reason for feeding, but it’s a powerful one and always has been. It was evident in Cornwall’s neighbour feeding the Rainbow Lorikeets in her Mackay garden in 1910 and in the Gould Leagues’ many celebrations of children reaching out to birds with food in their hands and love in their hearts. It was evident in Harry Wolstenholme’s rejoicing in the shrike-thrush eating from his fingers and in John Skemp’s “pleasant little thrill” when a bird showed its trust. It’s still evident in the many birders and non-birders today who delight in bonding with birds by sharing food with them.
If Darryl Jones and his colleagues are able to convince Australian bird lovers to join the rest of the world in a more relaxed attitude to bird feeding, we’ll be witnessing a revolution in the old sense of the term: a rotation of the wheel back to its starting point. If this happens, we’ll no doubt be more attentive to hygiene and the quality of what we offer birds –this is a trend in bird-feeding around the world. Yet while we’ll be more careful about what we offer to nourish the birds, we should bear in mind that, as for the bird lovers before us, feeding the birds is more to nourish our souls.
For more information read our guide to feeding wild birds in Australia.
This story ran in our Summer 2023 issue. To receive our Australian Birdlife magazine, become a member today.
Many don’t realise that feeding wild birds can do more harm than good for our feathered friends – and if done incorrectly, can lead to serious problems. While BirdLife Australia does not condone wild bird feeding, here is how to avoid harming the same wildlife you want to help.
Conservation starts in your backyard. The plants that we choose for our gardens can provide most, sometimes even all, of the food, shelter and nesting resources that urban birds require. So when you are deliberating over which plants to add your garden, it’s useful to consider the following.
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