Negative Impacts
Feeding wild birds does carry potential risks. Birds may contract and spread disease by gathering at feeders; poorly maintained feeding and watering stations may also cause illness. Birds at feeders risk predation by cats and other animals, or may incur injury by flying into windows. Steps should be taken to reduce the risks to birds, such as: regular disinfecting of feeders and watering stations, ensuring feed has not become moldy or rancid, and proper positioning of feeders to reduce crowding and window collisions. Birds are less likely to fly into windows that have a wooden lattice. Collisions with windows can also be reduced by using window decals.
Depending on the feeder design and the type of feed used, species such as the House Sparrow can dominate the use of the feeder. As a result, the House Sparrow population can become inflated locally where feeders are used. In North America, where the House Sparrow is an invasive species, competition from House Sparrows can exclude the indigenous bluebirds from available nest sites as well as attack indigenous birds.
The use of bird feeders has been claimed to cause many other environmental problems; some of these were highlighted in a 2002 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, an article that provoked responses nationwide from bird enthusiasts and scientists who refuted the article's points and complained about the unbalanced coverage.
Prior to the publication of the Wall Street Journal article, Canadian ornithologist Jason Rogers also wrote about the environmental problems associated with the use of bird feeders in the journal Alberta Naturalist. In this article, Rogers explains how the use of bird feeders is inherently fraught with negative impacts and risks such as fostering dependency, altering natural distribution, density, and migration patterns, interfering with ecological processes, causing malnutrition, facilitating the spread of disease, and increasing the risk of death from cats, pesticides, hitting windows, and other causes.
Read more about this topic: Bird Feeder
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