Bird tables not only bring birds near to the observer or garden owner, but also provide a valuable service in feeding birds in times of austerity, particularly in winter.
24 : Bird table
c. 1850
Bird tables not only bring birds near to the observer or garden owner, but also provide a valuable service in feeding birds in times of austerity, particularly in winter.
While there is little written history of bird feeding, and certainly few remaining antique bird feeders, the first intentional provision of food specifically for wild birds appears to have been by the 6th century monk Saint Serf of Fife, Scotland, who, when not performing legendary miracles, was said to have tamed a Robin by feeding it, according to James Fisher in The Shell Bird Book (1966).
Although the first prototype bird table design appeared in about 1850, the act of deliberate bird feeding largely disappeared from the historical record until 1890, when newspapers encouraged people to help birds survive that year’s harsh winter by putting out scraps in their gardens. The practice continued henceforth after this apparently pivotal moment, and was already considered a popular pastime in Britain before the First World War. It rapidly spread around the globe, with everything from hummingbirds in Trinidad to weavers in The Gambia and honeycreepers in Australia being encouraged to visit bird tables and suspended feeders.
Tables and feeders range in design from the baroque to the rustic, and from the rococo to the prosaic. Simple, practical designs have been published in popular birdwatching and ornithological books since at least the 1940s, with even the most primitive of carpentry skills being catered for. Plain seed mixes have now become more targeted with the seed of Nyjer (a trademarked species of Ethiopian daisy) incorporated for small finches and fat and suet recipes have also been prevalent since at least the 1960s.
There is no doubt that providing food for wild birds saves avian lives in hard weather, and can help supplement the nutrient and energy intakes of breeding birds. Bird feeding has also been shown to affect the very evolution of garden bird species, as in the case of Blackcaps from Germany. These insectivorous and frugivorous warblers migrate partly to Britain in winter and have thinner bills to get at suet in bird feeders; the more southern and slightly thicker-billed population migrates to Spain, where they eat ripe olives and other fruits. Conversely, bird feeding has also been implicated in reductions in survival in Blue Tit.
The presence of birds near houses and gardens, especially in urban environments, can be the only real contact with nature that some people have, and is important for keeping that one fragile thread intact – a connection healthy for both spirit and for conservation.